Great Religious 

teachers 

of the Gasl 



mfred W. Martin 




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GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 
OF THE EAST 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON - CHICAGO 
SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., LiMtrro 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCITTTA 
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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



GREAT 

RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

OF THE EAST 



BY 

ALFRED W. MARTIN 
It 

ASSOCIATE LEADER OF THE SOCIETT FOR ETHICAL 
CULTURE OF NEW YORK 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1911 

All rights reserved 



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COPTEIGHT, 1911, 

By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1911. 



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Norfaoott ^reaa 

J. S. Oushmg Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



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\ \ PREFATORY NOTE 

The lectures in this volume are seven of a 
series of twelve, delivered, without notes, on 
successive Sunday evenings in the winter of 
1911 at the Meeting-House of the Society for 
Ethical Culture of New York. 

In response to several hundred requests for 
their publication they were written out and 
have here been reproduced as nearly as pos- 
sible in their original form. 

The scripture readings, which were part of 
the preliminary exercises at each meeting, 
have been incorporated in the text of the 
lectures. 

A brief bibliography has been added for the 
benefit of those who may wish to extend their 
reading in the field of popular, non-technical 
literature on the great moral leaders whose 
life and work are here discussed. 



VI PEEFATORY NOTE 

The Society for Ethical Culture accords to 
its lecturers entire freedom of thought and of 
speech, and the members are equally free to 
accept or reject the views expressed from the 
platform. They commit no one but the lec- 
turer. He speaks solely for himself, and has 
no right to speak for any one else. It is 
therefore hoped that these lectures will be 
read in the light of this basic freedom of the 
Ethical fellowship. 

New York, September 1, 1911. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAOB 

I. The Discovery of the Sacred Books of the 

East and its Results 3 

ii. gotama, the buddha 37 

III. Zoroaster 75 

IV. Confucius and Lao-Tze . . . . . 105 

V. The Prophets of Israel and the Common- 
wealth OF Man 149 

VI. Jesus 193 

VII. Mohammed 227 

Bibliography 267 



YU 



u-- 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Gotama, the Buddha 40 

Zoroaster . . ' 80 

Lao-Tze 110*^ 

Confucius 130 ' 

Moses 170 

Jesus 200 "^ 

The Kaaba Stone 240 '^ 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE SACRED 
BOOKS OF THE EAST AND ITS 
RESULTS 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE SACRED 
BOOKS OF THE EAST AND ITS 
RESULTS 

"TTTHEN this course of lectures was first 
announced, a well-meaning gentleman 
remarked, "This will be a succession of intel- 
lectual treats." Nothing could be further 
from my purpose than to meet this expecta- 
tion. Interesting and instructive, perhaps, as 
much that I shall say may be, it is ethical 
culture, not intellectual entertainment, that 
constitutes the paramount aim of the course. 
My hope is that at the close of these lectures 
we shall find ourselves more catholic in our 
sympathies, more cosmopolitan in our atti- 
tude toward foreign faiths, more responsive 
to sources of inspiration that seemed wholly 
unpromising while we were under the baneful 
spell of prejudices born of ignorance. It is 
at such ethical results that this lecture-course 

3 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

aims. Gotama and Zoroaster, Confucius and 
Mohammed — less known to most of us than 
Moses and the prophets, Jesus and Paul,— 
have something to teach us that we need to 
learn, if, indeed, "the Orient is to complete 
the Occident." Only as we take up into our- 
selves all that is vital in them are we enabled 
to appreciate the wonderful story of man's 
spiritual unfolding and to discover what it is 
that we still need to round out and complete 
our own developing lives. It is a pathetic 
mistake to suppose that no indispensable good 
can come out of Oriental Nazareths other 
than the Palestinian. Such an error is on a 
par with his who described the Middle Ages 
as the "dark ages" and was all the while blind 
to their light. Let me adduce an illustration. 
The supreme product of the Middle Ages was 
St. Francis of Assisi, and among the conspicu- 
ous characteristics of our modern life is the 
growing revival of interest in this saint. We 
see it chiefly in the remarkable increase of 
Franciscan literature within the past decade. 
The reason for this revival is the discovery that 

4 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

the middle age was strong where our own is 
weak, that precisely those qualities in which 
St. Francis shone are the ones in which we are 
deplorably deficient, that his positive message 
is exactly what our age needs to give it bal- 
ance and roundness. We have wakened to a 
realization of the truth that besides his negative 
spirituality, — as manifested in his asceticism 
and self-torture, — St. Francis possessed also 
positive spirituality; witness his intense 
moral earnestness, his profound religious in- 
sight and aspiration, his utter self-consecra- 
tion to his calling, his genuine sympathy with 
Nature, his ineffable tenderness toward all 
living creatures, his constant habit of seeing 
the things of time under the aspect of eternity. 
And it is just these positive elements of his 
spiritual nature that our age sorely needs, to 
balance its absorption in material interests, 
its devotion to scientific pursuits, its alle- 
giance to utilitarian standards of progress 
and success. Similarly, the positive messages 
transmitted to us from the great moral teachers 
of India, Persia, China and Arabia, notwith- 

6 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

standing their local, transient elements, will 
be found to contain permanent and universal 
precepts concerning graces of character in 
which our occidental civilization is deficient. 
Thus priceless value and genuine revitalization 
are given to the teachings of these ancient 
oriental leaders the moment we enter into their 
spirit and note their contribution to the total 
content of the ideal of life. 

And this leads us directly to a consideration 
of the spirit in which we shall deal with our 
subject. It is the spirit that manifests itself 
in the practice of appreciation, a modern vir- 
tue towards which the race has been slowly 
climbing. Starting from the low level of per- 
secution, the three successive steps of human 
progress have been forbearance, tolerance and 
appreciation. 

Time was, when, in Christian civilization, 
persecution seemed ethically warranted, when 
those in ecclesiastical authority, assuming that 
they only had the true religion, believed it was 
God's will that they should suppress dissenters 
and so vindicate and spread "God's truth." 

6 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

If persuasion failed, they resorted to imprison- 
ment. When that proved ineffectual, they 
tried the lash. As a final measure they con- 
demned the dissenters to the stake, hoping by 
fire to exterminate both heresy and heretics. 
Nor are the traces of such persecution entirely 
extinct. To-day the Christian persecutes the 
Jew and the Jew the Christian. Romanism 
persecutes Protestantism, Orthodox Protes- 
tantism persecutes liberal Christianity, and 
liberal Christianity persecutes the religion 
that [is no longer Christian. 

A step upward in the direction of the ideal 
was taken when forbearance replaced perse- 
cution, when latitude was admitted in theology 
no less than in geography, when dissenters were 
reluctantly allowed to hold their heresies with- 
out fear of molestation or threat. And when 
tolerance was substituted for forbearance, 
it meant a new attitude toward dissenters, 
because tolerance is the willing consent to let 
others hold opinions different from our own. 
Yet even this attitude, noble as it is, cannot be 
regarded as the acme of spiritual attainment. 

7 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

For tolerance always implies a measure of 
concession. We tolerate what we must, but 
would suppress if we could. Tolerance has an 
air of patronizing condescension about it. He 
who tolerates affects a certain offensive su- 
periority, exhibits a spiritual conceit. Clearly, 
then, it cannot be true that "tolerance is the 
loveliest flower on the rose-bush of liberalism." 
Lovelier far is appreciation, which, while 
wholly free from the blemish that mars the 
beauty of tolerance, adds to that beauty fresh 
graces all its own. Appreciation is the spirit 
which exceeds tolerance, despises mere for- 
bearance, blushes at persecution. Toward 
the various religious systems of the world it 
takes a sympathetic attitude, seeking to esti- 
mate each from the dynamic rather than from 
the static viewpoint, judging each, not only by 
what it originally was, but also by what it has 
grown to be. The spirit of appreciation is 
such that before every religious teacher will it 
bow, be he Gotama or Zoroaster, Jesus or 
Mohammed, evaluating each according to the 
amount of truth he has to teach and the in- 

8 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

spiration which the record of his life affords. 
Similarly, in its attitude toward the messages 
of the world's great teachers, the mark of the 
spirit of appreciation appears. For it looks 
upon them all as like the stops and pedals of 
some vast organ, each contributing its par- 
ticular tone to the harmony of human aspira- 
tion and faith ; some accentuating the essen- 
tial, others the ornamental notes, none, of itself, 
producing the full-orbed music, but the har- 
monious blending of all creating the sublime 
world-symphony of reverence for the good, the 
beautiful and the true. 

Even toward error will he, in whom the 
spirit of appreciation dwells, take a worthy 
attitude. Realizing that all error is kept alive 
only by the germ of truth which it hides, he 
will feel it his duty to search for that germ 
and the more unpromising its appearance the 
more diligent his search. For, certain it is 
that we always have something to learn till we 
have traced, what to us are erroneous beliefs, 
back to their source and discovered what 
good and useful end they still serve for those 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

who hold them. If the spirit of appreciation 
be indeed ours, we shall feel no disposition 
either to ridicule superstitions or to regard 
our own cherished beliefs as complete and 
final truths. Rather will we realize our own 
finitude and the immense firmament of 
thought under which we move, ever watchful 
for each new star that the guiding heavens 
may reveal. 

The ultimate source of information, to 
which alone we shall appeal in this series of 
studies, includes, besides the Old and New Tes- 
taments, that noble set of volumes known as 
"The Sacred Books of the East," — transla- 
tions into English of what might be called ''the 
Bibles" of the Hindus, Buddhists, Parsees, 
Confucianists, Mohammedans. 

When these sacred scriptures were discov- 
ered, it was as though some long-lost musical 
score had been brought to light, which, when 
played by an orchestra of reverent and trained 
musicians, proved to be a symphony of reli- 
gions, destined to give a world-audience the 
sense of an universal spiritual fellowship. In 

10 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

the year 711, when the Moors of northern 
Africa invaded Spain, they brought with 
them a book they called the *'Word of God" 
and for which they made the most astounding 
inspirational claims. They declared that even 
though every extant copy of this book were 
to be destroyed, it would involve no irrepa- 
rable loss, for an eternal copy exists in heaven 
whence it can be at any time revealed to men 
anew ! This "revelation" proved to be the 
sacred book of the Mohammedans, the Qur'an, 
long since translated from Arabic into the 
chief languages of the civilized world. 

About the middle of the fourteenth century 
certain travellers from central Europe found 
their way to a fertile, densely populated coun- 
try which they called *' Cathay." On return- 
ing home, they reported upon conditions ob- 
served in this country — which meanwhile 
they had learned to name "China." They 
told of the enormous literary production of its 
people and more especially of the books that 
dealt with the philosophy of life and with the 
systematic regulation of human conduct in all 

11 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

the various relations, private and public, in 
which members of a community find them- 
selves. These books were none other than 
the Confucian sacred scriptures, most of which 
had been edited by Confucius, while one of the 
books was the work of his own hand. These, 
too, like the Qur'an, were eventually trans- 
lated into the leading languages of the 
world. 

In 1754 Anquetil du Perron, a university 
student, browsing in the royal library of 
Paris, came upon some dusty fragments of an 
ancient manuscript, written in a Sanskrit 
dialect. Great was his joy on finding them 
to be a portion of the "A vest a," or Bible of the 
Zoroastrians. Eager to know more of this 
literature and of these people, he took ship for 
Bombay, where, for a millennium or more a 
colony of Zoroastrian exiles had been settled. 
Anquetil resided among these people for three 
years, mastering their language and their re- 
ligion. Before returning to Paris, he came into 
possession of one hundred and eighty manu- 
scripts, which, together with his original find 

12 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

in the royal library, constitutes practically 
all that we now have of the Zoroastrian Bible. 
The first translation of this book into any 
European language appeared in 1771 at Paris. 
Since that time, however, it has been made 
accessible to English and German readers 
as well as French. 

In 1757, when the British invasion and occu- 
pancy of India had fairly begun, there was 
discovered (as an indirect result of that great 
commercial enterprise) the *' Rig- Veda," the 
oldest portion of one of the oldest Bibles in the 
world. It is a collection of one thousand and 
seventeen prayer-hymns, addressed to the 
personified forces and phenomena of Nature. 
Following close upon this discovery came that 
of the other three '' Vedas." Then the "Aran- 
yakas" or forest meditations, the "Upani- 
shads" and the two great Epics, the "Mahab- 
barata " and the " Ramayana," were discovered, 
constituting, in all, a body of Hindu sacred 
literature more than four times as large as the 
Christian scriptures. Soon other Indian books 
were brought to light, and these proved to be 

13 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

none other than the sacred scriptures of the 
Buddhists, the "Pitakas." 

It is to these "Sacred Books of the East," 
then, that we shall turn, from week to week, 
for they are our ultimate sources of information 
concerning those great moral leaders whose life 
and teaching we are to study. 

From the discovery and translation of this 
oriental literature two important results have 
followed, the one, direct and immediate; the 
other, indirect and remote. 

The first and immediate effect was the 
creation of a new science, commonly known as 
"comparative religion," or "comparative the- 
ology" as some scholars have preferred to 
designate it. This science, proceeding by the 
orderly method familiar to natural scientists — 
observation, classification, hypothesis and veri- 
fication — has already produced a series of 
assured results of far-reaching significance for 
the unification of religions. Let us review the 
more important of these conclusions which the 
science of comparative religion has established. 

1. The universality of fundamental moral 
14 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

sentiments, such as justice, veracity, gratitude, 
service, sympathy, love. Far from charac- 
terizing the gospel of any one religion alone, 
these moral ideas are found to be common to 
all religions. Take, for example, the moral 
sentiment of catholicity and note the oneness of 
thought beneath the variety of statement as 
we see it in the following quotations from the 
literature of the seven extant great religions. 

Hindu: "The object of all religions is 
alike, all seek the object of their love and all 
the world is love's dwelling-place." 

Buddhist: "The root of religion is to rever- 
ence one's own faith and never to revile the 
faith of others. My religion is like the sky, it 
has room for all and like water it washes all 
alike." 

Zoroastrian: "Have the religions of man- 
kind no common ground ? Is there not every- 
where the same enrapturing beauty ? Broad 
indeed is the carpet God has spread and many 
are the colors He has given it. Whatever road 
I take joins the highway that leads to Thee." 

Confucian: "The broad-minded see the 
15 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

truth in different religions, the narrow-minded 
see only the differences." 

Jewish: "Wisdom in all ages entering into 
holy souls, maketh them friends of God and 
prophets." 

Christian: "Are we not all children of one 
Father ^ Hath not one God created us ? Be- 
hold how good and pleasant a thing it is for 
brethren to dwell together in unity." 

Mohammedan: "Whatever be thy religion, 
associate with men who think differently from 
thee. If thou canst mix with them freely and 
are not angered at hearing their doctrines, 
thou hast attained freedom and art a master of 
creation." 

2. The universality of such religious senti- 
ments as wonder, awe, reverence, worship, 
hope, aspiration. These, too, the comparative 
method has proved, are present in all the va- 
rious sj^stems of faith. Here, for example, are 
seven passages from the same seven Bibles 
on faith in man's survival of death, the trust 
that his earthly life is not the only life. 

Hindu: "Thy body give to the plants and 
16 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

to the waters, but there is an immortal part 
of thee, transport it to the world of the holy." 

Buddhist: "The soul is myself, the body is 
only my dwelling-place. Good actions go with 
the soul beyond the river of death." 

Zoroastrian: ''I fear not death. I fear 
only not having lived well enough." 

Confucian : "It is because men see only their 
bodies that they hate death." 

Jewish: "The memorial of virtue is immor- 
tal. Blessed is the memory of the just, for 
their works do follow them." 

Christian: "Though our outward man per- 
ish, yet is our inward man day by day re- 
newed." 

Mohammedan: "Mortals ask, what prop- 
erty has he left behind him ^ Angels ask, what 
good deeds has he sent on before him V^ 

3. Unity of spiritual substance in diversity 
of religious forms and ceremonies. Differ- 
ences of climate, environment, heredity and 
racial origin, these, it has been shown, gave 
rise to varieties in the expression of one and 
the same fundamental religious feeling. 
c 17 



GEEAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

Whether it be the Papuan, squatting in dumb 
meditation before his feathered God; or the 
Aztec, dancing and chanting before his sym- 
boHcal block; or the Moslem, prostrate in 
front of his Mosque ; or the Christian, kneel- 
ing in petitional prayer to his Father in 
heaven; or the cosmic theist, silently seeking 
communion and at-one-ment with the Infinite 
and Eternal whence all things and beings are 
derived; in each case it is one and the same 
sense of dependence on a higher Power and 
of hunger for a higher, worthier life that is 
expressed. 

4. Most of the ten commandments ante- 
date the Mosaic age and have their equiva- 
lents in most of the non-Semitic religions. 
Nay, more, in the light of " comparative 
religion" we see that there are at least four 
other commandments, contributed by Bud- 
dhism, Mohammedanism, and Confucianism, — 
concerning temperance, intellectual honesty, 
humaneness and cleanliness, — which may 
well be added to the familiar ten. 

5. The Golden Rule, far from having origi- 

18 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

nated with Jesus, or even five hundred years 
eariier, with Confucius, is as old as the oldest 
religion whose scriptures have come down to us 
and common to the Bibles of all the world's 
great religions. Thus we find seven versions 
of the Golden Rule corresponding to the seven 
great religions. 

Hindu: "The true rule in life is to guard 
and do by the things of others as you do by 
your own." 

Buddhist: "One should seek for others the 
happiness one desires for oneself." 

Zoroastrian: "Do as you would be done 
by." 

Confucian : "What you do not wish done to 
yourself do not unto others." 

Jewish : " What you do not want your neigh- 
bor to do to you, do not unto him." 

Christian: "All things whatsoever ye would 
that men should do to you, do ye even so to 
them." 

Mohammedan: "Let none of you treat 
another in a way you yourself would dis- 
like to be treated." 

19 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

Even the ancient Hebrew precept, "an eye 
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth " (as we shall 
see more fully when we enter on our study of 
Moses), represents the law of justice as it was 
understood in primitive communities, and jus- 
tice is the heart of the Golden Rule. 

6. Religions can no longer be classified ac- 
cording to the division popular before the 
science of comparative religion was created, a 
division that recognized only two classes of 
religions. Christian and Pagan, divine and 
human, revealed and natural, true and fafse. 
We read a Vedic chant and marvel at its re- 
semblance to familiar Old Testament psalms 
and to the refrain of the "Litany" in the Epis- 
copalian Prayer-book. We hear the Zoroas- 
trian's prayer for purity and note how slight 
a change in the language of his invocation 
would make it suit the spiritual need of any 
theist in any part of the world. The "Ser- 
mon on the Mount" and the "Noble Eight- 
fold Path" have many more points of agree- 
ment than of difference, while the ethical spirit 
pervading the two discourses is the same. 

20 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

Open the Bible of the Moslem, or of the Con- 
fucian, and there, no less than in the New Tes- 
tament, the credentials of a religion are found, 
appealing in accents strong and beautiful to 
their respective believers even as do those of 
the Christian scriptures to the followers of 
Jesus and Paul. 

7. Prior to the researches involved in the 
science of comparative religion it was gener- 
ally supposed that there are moral precepts in 
the New Testament which have no parallel 
in any non-Christian literature. Such was 
the contention of a somewhat bumptious 
clergyman at a memorable meeting of the 
Free Religious Association of America held 
in Boston nearly forty years ago. This ear- 
nest, zealous apologist cited, with considerable 
unction, certain passages from the Gospels, 
adding that these could not be matched in the 
sacred books of any of the great ethnic re- 
ligions. Present at this meeting was Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, himself one of the earliest 
and foremost champions of the new science. 
Knowing the clergyman's statement to be 

21 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

without adequate foundation, he quietly arose 
and said, with characteristic dignity and 
serenity, "The gentleman's remark only proves 
how narrowly he has read." Rodrigues-, in his 
"'Origines du Sermon de la Montague" has 
furnished conspicuous proof of the fact that 
all the salient teachings of Jesus had already 
been spoken by earlier Jewish leaders and 
that, consequently, his originality must be 
sought elsewhere than in his ethical utterances. 
Since the appearance of Rodrigues' mono- 
graph many an anthology has appeared, carry- 
ing the comparative method beyond the 
confines of the Talmud, Apocrypha and Old 
Testament to the great body of non-Jewish, 
pre-Christian literature, thereby reconfirming 
the conclusion that there is no moral precept 
in the New Testament but can be paralleled 
elsewhere in the Bibles of the great religions. 

8. It remains to note one other important 
result achieved by the science of comparative 
religion. It has relegated to the realm of the 
obsolete and unreliable many a popular book 
on comparative religion, reminding us of 

22 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

iEsop's familiar fable of the forester and the 
lion. Walking in the woods one day they 
fell to discussing the question, "Which is the 
stronger, a lion or a man ?" Unable to arrive 
at a mutually satisfying answer, they were 
about to dismiss the subject when quite unex- 
pectedly they came upon a piece of statuary 
representing a man in the act of throwing 
down a lion. "There," said the woodsman, 
"you see the man is the stronger." To which 
the lion replied, "Ah, yes; but their positions 
would have been reversed if a lion had been 
the sculptor." Too often have Christian 
literary sculptors exhibited the relative posi- 
tion of their own faith and that of non- 
Christians in such wise that it surely would 
have been reversed had the latter been the 
sculptors. Equally applicable is the fable 
to those Buddhists, Mohammedans and other 
non-Christians who have represented their 
respective religions as victoriously wrestling 
with Christianity. Typical of the former 
class are some of the volumes on non-Chris- 
tian religious systems issued by the "Society 

23 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge," 
also that most popular of books on comparative 
religion, ''The Ten Great Religions," by James 
Freeman Clarke, of sainted memory. It is 
with some reluctance that I make mention of 
his work, for it was of him that James Marti- 
neau — England's foremost theologian and 
philosopher in the nineteenth century — said to 
me: "He is the New Englander whom I 
venerate most since the time of Charming." 
Yet with all due deference to his great name 
and remembering that his work was published 
while the science of comparative religion was 
still in its infancy, it must be admitted that 
his fundamental position, symbolized by the 
unique design on the cover of his book, is 
contrary to the spirit, method and results of 
this science. In the light of those results it 
is no longer possible to regard Christianity 
as the "pleroma" of religion, containing all 
that is good and true in the other religions, 
adding thereto elements of faith and morals 
that make it the absolute religion and thereby 
distinguish it from all other systems of religion. 

24 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

Pass we now to that indirect and remote re- 
sult of the discovery and translation of the 
"Sacred Books of the East," to which I referred, 
namely, the famous religious convention held 
at Chicago in 1893. Given the discovery and 
translation of the "Sacred Books of the East;" 
given also the science of comparative religion 
with its verified conclusions, and there would 
follow as a natural, logical consequence a 
"World's ParHament of Religions." The 
"World's Fair" of that year furnished the 
occasion adequate to the convening of a uni- 
versal congress of religions. Not since the 
discovery of America has anything so deci- 
sively marked the advance of civilization as 
this mammoth convention. Here, in truth, 
was something bigger than the Ferris wheel, 
brighter than the display of electric lights, 
grander than the splendor of the great "White 
City." Even that magnificent panorama of 
architecture and landscape-gardening on the 
"Court of Honor" paled before the procession 
of the world's great faiths. At the head of 
that procession walked a Swedenborgian lay- 

25 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

man, Mr. C. C. Bonney, arm in arm with 
scarlet-robed Cardinal Gibbons, the highest 
dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church in the 
United States. Behind them walked Buddhist 
and Brahmin, Christian and Confucian, Jew 
and Mohammedan, Hindu monk and Metho- 
dist missionary, Zoroastrian priest and Greek 
Church bishop, — all in one triumphant march 
of brotherhood. Would that some painter had 
been present to put on canvas that memorable 
scene, symbolizing as it did the death-knell 
of sectarian exclusiveness, jealousy and pride, 
prophetic as it was of the coming peace among 
the conflicting religions of the world ! The 
Parliament was conceived and planned by a 
Presbyterian preacher of Chicago, Rev. John 
Henry Barrows. The closing speech was deliv- 
ered by a Swedenborgian layman, the final 
prayer ofifered by a Jewish rabbi and the bene- 
diction prqnounced by a Roman Catholic bishop. 
Of the one hundred and thirty-seven sects 
into which Christianity was then divided, 
practically all the larger bodies were repre- 
sented at the Parliament, excepting only the 

26 



SACRED BOOKS OJ* THE EAST 

Episcopalian. OflBcially this branch of the 
Christian Church was without representation, 
though many Episcopalians were present on 
their own responsibility, notably the Rever- 
ends A. W. Momerie of London and R. Heber 
Newton of New York. The American Church 
followed the lead of the Anglican in declining 
to participate in the proceedings of the Par- 
liament. The Archbishop of Canterbury, head 
of the Anglican Church, took the ground that 
were Christianity to be represented on the 
platform with all the other religions, it would 
place the Christian religion on a level of equal- 
ity with these, which he, of course, could not 
admit. Consequently he had no alternative 
but to forbid the official representation of his 
Church. Given his premises, and we all must 
admit that the Archbishop was logical and 
consistent. For, when Christianity, through 
its representatives, consented to sit in the 
Parliament on equal terms with other faiths, 
it surrendered, whether intentionally or un- 
consciously, the claim to be the only true, 
divine religion in the world. 

27 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

As for the effect of the Parliament on the 
Christian and non-Christian delegates, it was 
admitted by the latter that their conception of 
Christianity had undergone considerable modi- 
fication. To these foreigners Christianity had 
come in warships and at the point of the 
bayonet. It has brought the missionary and 
the Bible indeed, but also the evils of the 
opium and rum traffic. Not a few of the 
missionaries had assumed a haughty, im- 
perious, un-Christian air, and unfavorable 
judgment of Christians as a class ensued. 
But at the Parliament these oriental delegates 
had an opportunity to see phases of Chris- 
tianity and types of Christian character 
hitherto unknown to them, and the result was 
that they returned to their respective homes 
with corrected conceptions of both Chris- 
tianity and its representatives. 

No less salutary and significant was the effect 
of the Parliament upon the occidental Chris- 
tian contingent. Their eyes were now opened 
to certain facts as never before. There was 
brought home to them the fact that only one- 

28 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

third of the total population of the globe is 
Christian and that with the single exception of 
Mohammedanism, all the world's great reli- 
gions are older than Christianity. Nay more, 
the fact was brought freshly to light that in 
the formation of such Christian beliefs as the 
resurrection and the trinity and of such festi- 
vals as Christmas and Easter the influence 
of non-Christian religions is indisputable and 
clear. Not least among the benefits which 
the Parliament wrought was that exerted 
upon missionary enterprise. To-day it is 
practically impossible for our Christian mis- 
sionaries to go to India or China, or any other 
oriental country armed with the doctrine that 
two-thirds of the earth's people are eternally 
doomed unless they accept the orthodox 
Christian system of theology. In the spring 
of 1893, four months before the Parliament 
was opened, the *' American Board of Com- 
missioners for Foreign Missions" debated the 
question whether or not missionaries should 
be allowed to go to the Orient unless they were 
prepared to teach the doctrines of "the fall 

29 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

of man" and "hell." But since September 
of that year the question has not been revived, 
and it is safe to say it never will be. Still 
another positive good which the Parliament 
achieved was the wholesome humbling of those 
Christians who with a Pharisaic tone had 
"thanked God they were not as these pagan 
idolaters and infidels." For the Parliament 
made it plain that these pagans were believers, 
holding a living faith to which they strove to 
be faithful and in the divine origin of which 
they devoutly believe. Moreover, on the 
platform "pagan" prayers were offered, of 
which certain resident Christians confessed 
that they breathed as pure and elevated a 
spirit as those emanating from Christian 
hearts. Here, too, it was observed that there 
are aspects of modern life in which Confucian- 
ists and Zoroastrians are exceptionally civil- 
ized even as there are respects in which Chris- 
tian civilization may claim superiority to 
other types. In a word, the supreme boon of 
the Parliament has been the broadening of 
religious sympathies, the removal of preju- 

30 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

dices and misunderstandings, the unfolding of 
common moral and spiritual ideas and ideals, 
the whole inevitably making for the Brother- 
hood of Man to a degree unprecedented in the 
history of civilization. Small wonder, there- 
fore, that since the Parliament many a minor 
"congress of religious liberals" should have 
been formed, and that the movement toward 
religious unity should have taken noteworthy 
forward steps. Year by year the seemingly 
fixed sectarian barriers are being removed. 
Just now a distinguished English Congrega- 
tional minister has received and accepted a 
call to one of the leading Presbyterian churches 
of this city, and a Baptist preacher of excep- 
tional power is about to make the transition 
to Congregationalism without any theological 
catechizing whatsoever. Sunday evening meet- 
ings under the auspices of Unitarian, Universal- 
ist and Reformed Jewish societies furnish further 
illustration of the new spirit and tendency in the 
religious world, albeit that these meetings are 
devoted exclusively to social questions and that 
the religious diflFerences are religiously ignored. 

31 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

Who knows but that through this medium 
the sectarian sores, which, when touched, al- 
ways cause the sectarian nerves to respond, 
will be healed, leaving not even a scar to indi- 
cate and recall the conflicting creeds. Nobler 
than the unity which is "Christian" or "Jew- 
ish" is the non-sectarian unity which is Hu- 
man and which extends the amenities of a 
platform for the promotion of civic righteous- 
ness to one for the realization of religious 
brotherhood. It is not enough to be brothers 
and sisters "in Christ"; we must be brothers 
and sisters in Humanity with all the rest of 
mankind. Nor is the advent of such a non- 
sectarian brotherhood, standing for fraternity 
in freedom, an empty, baseless dream. Just 
as fast as men and women of all persuasions 
grow to care more for the triumph of truth 
than they do for sectarian victory; as fast 
as they learn to attach a higher value to 
spiritual freedom than to tradition and adher- 
ence to creed or custom, so fast will the world 
witness that finest of all religious fellowships, 
which lifts it above all differences of creed, 

32 



SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST 

color, class and race, to the sublime plane of 
that Universal Religion which we are just be- 
ginning to understand. 

Herder, the German dramatist and Biblical 
critic, once compared the religions of mankind 
to the strings of a harp, each of which gives 
forth its own particular note, and the harmon- 
ious blending of all the notes producing a 
veritable symphony of religions. 

In this course of lectures we shall listen to 
the individual notes which the founders of six 
of the world's great religious systems have con- 
tributed to the symphony of religions. And 
since each one of the six "notes" is ethical 
rather than theological, since the prime con- 
cern of these founders was not with theological 
changes so much as with moral reform in the 
field of religion, we shall fix our attention upon 
their function as great moral leaders, touching 
only incidentally on their respective theologi- 
cal positions and claims. 



33 



I 



II 

GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 



II 

GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

/^UR study of the great religious teachers of 
the East begins with the hfe and message 
of one who was born in India nearly twenty-five 
centuries ago. 

India is a vast country, to be compared, not 
with Germany, or France, or Spain, but only 
with Europe itself, for India is as large as all 
Europe,'^excluding only Russia. Forty cen- 
turies ago this vast country was inhabited 
by a variety of ferocious tribes who were gradu- 
ally conquered by a new and warlike people 
from beyond the Himalayas, on the table- 
lands of central Asia. These invaders called 
themselves "Aryas," i.e, lordly or worthy 
ones. They were gifted with poetic imagina- 
tion, memory, language, keen intellectuality 
and, above all, with a strong religious instinct. 
While still a migratory people, prior to their 
invasion of India, they had composed hymns 

37 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

(Vedas) in honor of the personified forces of 
Nature, to be sung as an accompaniment to 
the sacrifice of "soma "-juice and melted 
butter ; — the singing and the sacrifice con- 
stituting their only forms of worship. These 
unsophisticated observers of Nature believed 
that within or behind every visible phenome- 
non there resided a Power responsible for all 
that occurs in connection with it and capable 
of affecting the life of man and beast for 
good or ill. Hence the personification and 
worship of these powers as manifested in the 
various forces and phenomena of Nature. At 
first there were only a few of these gods, but 
with the rise of distinctions such as that of 
"Bhaga," the sun before sunrise, "Surya," the 
risen sun, and "Savitri," the creating sun, the 
number of these personifications increased 
and, therefore, also, the number of sacrifices. 
It would carry us too far afield to trace the 
development of this primitive polytheism and 
worship. Suffice it to note that out of the origi- 
nal Aryan religion, with its simple "Vedic" 
hymns and sacrifices, there was evolved, by the 

38 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

year 1000 B.C., an immense pantheon, an 
elaborate ceremonial, an ecclesiastical hier- 
archy, a caste system and a doctrine of the 
infallibility of the Vedas. Between the years 
1000 and 500 B.C., religion in the valley of the 
Ganges (whither the descendants of the in- 
vading Aryas had migrated from the valley of 
the Indus) was marked by excessive devotion 
to the externalities of worship, by absorption 
in theological speculation and by the solid 
entrenchment of the caste system in the na- 
tional life. And this was "Brahmanism." But, 
as always happens where a people becomes so 
engrossed in theology and ritual as to mistake 
theories and forms of religion for its essence, a 
reaction occurs, — away from ceremonies and 
speculations, to personal morality and service. 
Indeed, religious reform usually signifies, not 
that fault has been found with the ritual as 
such, but that the moral issues of life have 
suffered eclipse. 

Precisely such a reform was inaugurated in 
India about the year 500 B.C. when Gotama 
(reared in that "Brahmanism" which grew 

39 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

out of the primitive "Vedism") led a reac- 
tionary ethical movement, to be eventually 
known as "Buddhism." So successful was 
the reform- work of this great moral leader 
that within two hundred and fifty years of his 
death what he stood for became the state 
religion of India. Then followed a long, bitter, 
obstinate struggle between Buddhism and 
Brahmanism for the religious control of In- 
dia, resulting in a counter-reformation of the 
latter and the complete expulsion of the 
former from India, to Ceylon and the islands of 
the Indian archipelago, whence it found its way 
to China, Thibet, Japan and other countries, 
there undergoing strange and varied trans- 
formations. Thus there occurred in ancient 
India a prototype of the Protestant Reforma- 
tion and the Roman Catholic counter-reforma- 
tion. For just as Martin Luther protested 
against certain evils in the Romanism in which 
he had been reared and in which he died, so 
Gotama inveighed against kindred evils in 
the Brahmanism in which he had been reared 
and in which he died. And precisely as 

40 




GOTAMA. 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

Luther's reform was followed by a counter- 
reformation within Romanism itself, led by 
Loyola and resulting in the reestablishment 
of its lost prestige, so after Gotama's death 
Brahmanism underwent reform and succeeded 
in reinstating itself in India even to the entire 
exclusion of its rival. 

The purpose of what has been thus far said 
is to provide the necessary setting for our study 
of Gotama's work, to indicate his place in the 
history of religion in ancient India, to show 
the precise part he played in eflPecting the tran- 
sition from Brahmanism to Buddhism and the 
particular field in which he gained distinction 
as one of the great moral leaders of the Orient. 

There were many *'Buddhas" in ancient 
India, just as there were many "Christs" 
in ancient Palestine. The word "Buddha," 
like the word "Christ," is not the name of a 
man, but the title of an oflSce. Buddha means 
"enlightened" and Christ means "anointed." 
Jesus was called the Christ because it was 
believed by certain Judean contemporaries that 
he was the long-expected "anointed one" who 

41 



GEEAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

would deliver Israel from the hand of the op- 
pressor and restore the prosperity and peace 
of David's day. Jesus, they thought, was the 
"Messiah," and "Christ" is but the Greek 
equivalent for the Hebrew "Messiah." Simi- 
larly Gotama was called "the Buddha" be- 
cause it was believed that he had shed new 
light on the path of salvation and therefore 
was worthy to be called "the enlightened 
one." Other names by which he is known in 
literature are the following: " Siddhartha," 
the name given him by his father and signify- 
ing one in whom wishes are fulfilled; "Bhaga- 
vat," fortunate or blessed; "Tathagata," as 
his predecessors ; " Cakya-muni," monk of the 
Cakya tribe. He was born about 550 B.C. in 
Kapilavastu, a small town eighty miles north 
of Benares, in the valley of the Ganges, the 
hottest civilized land on the globe, home of 
that pessimism which has ever been charac- 
teristic of Brahmanic and Buddhistic thought. 
Here climate, environment and economic con- 
ditions conspire to breed philosophical pessi- 
mism. Nowhere else in the world does Nature 

42 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

exhibit so malignant a mien. Here floods do 
their devastating work upon farms and homes ; 
here drought, lasting in the monsoon time for 
six months or more, is followed by famine, 
cholera and plague ; here pythons and venom- 
ous snakes annually decimate the population, 
while tigers claim their victims by the thou- 
sand. Small wonder that here the belief 
should obtain that life is essentially evil and 
to be somehow escaped. Great wonder it is 
that this Aryan stock should remain to this 
day, despite their inimical environment, a most 
remarkable people; that though their bodies 
suffer from dyspepsia, dysentery, diabetes and 
various forms of hysteria, their mentality has 
not suffered, but gives promise of working out 
the tremendous social, political and economic 
problems of the country. 

The story of Gotama's life has been delight- 
fully told by Sir Edwin Arnold, in his "Light 
of Asia," a poetical version which, while mak- 
ing free use of legendary material, presents the 
man and his message in such wise that the 
reader readily orients himself and enters into 

43 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

the thought, aim and spirit of the great re- 
former. 

We shall not have time to analyze this classic 
and, by reference to the original documents, 
separate the legendary from the historical 
portions of the narrative. Suffice it merely to 
state that the '* higher criticism" of the Bud- 
dhist Scriptures — the ultimate source of in- 
formation on which all biographers draw — is 
still at work on the task of determining how 
much of what is there recorded can be ac- 
cepted as trustworthy, just as in the case of the 
gospels of the New Testament the higher criti- 
cism is engaged in a corresponding problem 
touching what may be believed concerning 
Jesus. 

Born into the "ruler" caste, which, together 
with the priestly, warrior and laborer castes, 
constituted the original four divisions of the 
system, the young Gotama was reared under 
most favorable conditions, provided with all 
that wealth and social position could supply 
and shielded to the utmost possible extent 
from acquaintance with unpleasant or painful 

44 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

experiences. But, one day, so the story goes, 
while driving in the royal park he saw in quick 
succession three most pitiable and distressing 
sights. First, an aged man, feeble, trembling, 
tottering helplessly to the ground. Next, 
the victim of a loathsome leprous disease, hid- 
eous to behold. . And then, a funeral proces- 
sion. Returning home at once, Gotama re- 
solved to find a way of escape from infirm old 
age, disease and death. The third book of 
the "Light of Asia" closes with a graphic de- 
scription of this resolve, the intense, passionate 
yearning with which this youth of twenty-three 
faced the task he set himself to fulfil. 

" Oh, suffering world ; 
Oh, known and unknown of my common flesh. 
Caught in this common net of death and woe. 
And life which binds to both ! I see, I feel. 
The vastness of the agony of earth, 
The vainness of its joys, the anguish of its worst ; 
Since pleasures end in pain, and youth in age. 
And love in loss, and life in hateful death, 
And death in unknown lives, which will but yoke 
Men to their wheel again to whirl the round 
Of false delights and woes that are not false. 
Me too this lure hath cheated, so it seemed 

45 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

Lovely to live, and life a sunlit stream 
Forever flowing in a changeless peace ; 
Whereas the foolish ripple of the flood 
Dances so lightly down by bloom and lawn 
Only to pour its crystal quicklier 
Into the foul salt sea. The veil is rent 
Which blinded me. I am as all these men 
Who cry upon their gods and are not heard. 
Or are not heeded — yet there must be aid ! 
For them and me and all there must be help ! 
Perchance the gods have need of help themselves. 
Being so feeble that when sad lips cry 
They cannot save ! I would not let one cry 
Whom I could save. How can it be that Brahm 
Would make a world and keep it miserable. 
Since, if, all-powerful, he leaves it so, 
He is not good, and if not powerful. 
He is not God." 

And so, under the spell of these philosophical 
reflections Gotama went forth, leaving wife 
and child, to find the coveted way of escape. 
For six years he was a homeless wanderer, 
going from one hermit to another, hoping 
thus to acquire the practical knowledge that 
would save mankind. Such procedure seems 
strange to us, but we must remember that in 
those days there were no printed books by 
which one could come in touch with scholar- 

46 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

ship. One's only resource was to visit the 
recluses who had retired to their respective 
"retreats" to work out their problems in 
philosophy and religion. This, indeed, was a 
common practice of the time among the various 
sects of the country, climate and environment 
lending themselves exceptionally well to forest 
meditation and study. But the conviction 
was at last borne in upon Gotama that these 
intellectual searchings brought no solution for 
his problem. Philosophical speculation, he 
concluded, is not the medium through which 
the needed light can shine. He then turned 
to asceticism, in accordance with an ancient 
oriental belief that starvation is conducive 
to mentality; the less one eats the more vigor- 
ous and keen one's power to think. Self- 
mortification, it was believed, superinduces a 
thought-power so great as to elicit from the 
gods a revelation of the truth. But after 
faithful, prolonged devotion to the ascetic 
life, even to the verge of physical collapse, 
Gotama concluded that not by this ave- 
nue any more than by that of speculation 

47 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

can one hope to reach a solution of the 
problem. 

Finally, while seated one day in deep medita- 
tion under a lotus-tree, since known as the 
"'bodhi" (enlightenment) tree, the long-sought 
solution came, and it was promptly developed 
into an orderly, systematic body of beliefs and 
precepts. Gathering about him a small band 
of disciples, Gotama, for the remaining forty- 
five years of his life, devoted himself to 
preaching and spreading his gospel until, at the 
ripe old age of eighty years, he died, leaving to 
his immediate followers the task of continuing 
the missionary work so successfully begun. 
Thus, while Heraclitus and Pythagoras in 
Greece were shaping their philosophies, while 
Nehemiah and his associates were reorganizing 
the Hebrew nation in Jerusalem after the Baby- 
lonian captivity, while Confucius was ful- 
filling the part of statesman and moralist in 
China, the founder of Buddhism was protest- 
ing against certain errors and evils in the Brah- 
manism in which he had been brought up and 
supplementing his protest with a positive. 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

constructive gospel of escape from a world in 
which suffering, sorrow, disease and death 
were the common lot. 

The simple ceremonial of "Vedism" had 
developed into an elaborate and expensive 
ritual. Asceticism had come to be regarded 
as a virtue of the highest type and even a pro- 
gramme of physical austerities had been worked 
out. The caste system had grown increasingly 
and obnoxiously exclusive. Speculation on 
the hereafter had become so engrossing as to 
cause neglect of the practical humanities. 
Nay, more, the popular philosophy of the period 
was found to be defective, so that the hope 
of salvation rested on insecure foundations. 
Against these features of the religion into which 
he was born Gotama now registered his pro- 
test. He denounced the costly ritual as waste- 
ful and unethical. He repudiated asceticism 
as a practice inimical to the health of both 
body and mind. He pronounced the caste 
system degrading and undemocratic. Intel- 
lectual speculation on the finale of man's 
career, he deprecated as being both futile and 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

unwarranted. The belief in the existence of 
"Brahma," — a permanent and supreme 
Power, the soul of the universe, — the belief in 
the existence of a "soul" in man, as an entity, 
capable of transmigration at death, the belief 
in man's ultimate absorption into "Brahma," 
— all these theological beliefs he regarded as 
superstitions, unworthy the support of en- 
lightened people. Such, in brief, was the pro- 
test of Gotama on its negative side and had it 
ended there, no Buddhism would have been 
born. For no movement can ever live that is 
built solely upon negations. No future ever 
awaits a cause grounded upon iconoclasm. 
Every religious system that survives and per- 
petuates itself does so only on the basis of 
its affirmations. Nor have we a more con- 
spicuous contemporary instance of this truth 
than that furnished by the Ethical Culture 
Movement itself. Thirty-four years ago its 
distinguished founder supplemented a series 
of emphatic protests against current beliefs 
and practices, with a positive, constructive 
programme, putting something in the place of 

50 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

everything he took away. And to this, its 
affirmative gospel, the Movement owes its 
life. 

Similarly the survival of Buddhism would 
have been impossible but for the genius of its 
founder in following up his series of negations 
with a corresponding set of affirmations. In 
place of a dry and forbidding ritual he offered 
a fervent and inspiring morality. For as- 
ceticism and sensualism alike, he substituted 
temperance, adding to the persuasive eloquence 
with which he preached it, the more potent 
influence of personal example. To do away 
with the degrading and undemocratic caste 
system he proposed the ennobling, inclusive 
doctrine of brotherhood. For vain specula- 
tion on insoluble questions he substituted a 
practical course in ethical self -discipline. The 
belief in the infallibility of the Vedas, he 
surrendered in favor of belief in enlightened 
reason as our safest guide. As against the 
notion that the gods can influence human 
affairs, he took the ground that the gods, no 
less than men, are subject to the law of 

51 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

*' Karma" and that far from having his fate 
determined by the dictum of any god, man 
has the determination of his fate in his own 
hands, in strict accordance with that law. 

Before proceeding to the interpretation of 
this law, let me confirm what has just been said 
concerning the constructive gospel of Gotama 
by a few citations from the "Pitakas," the 
fountain-source of information on Buddhism, 
precisely as the New Testament is the foun- 
tain-source of information on Christianity. 
The word "Pitakas" means baskets and as h^re 
used refers to those archaeological excavations 
which are conducted with the aid of baskets 
handed on from workman to workman stand- 
ing in a long line from the spot whence the 
earth is removed to that where it is deposited 
for examination. So a long line of teachers 
and pupils have handed on the treasures of 
Buddhistic teaching in "Pitakas" of which 
there are three, the Vinaya, or rules of dis- 
cipline for the order of monks, the Dhamma, or 
the ethical sermons preached by Gotama, and 
the Abhiddamma, or the metaphysical and 

52 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

psychological background of this ethical teach- 
ing. Like the Vedas the Pitakas were trans- 
mitted orally for centuries, trained repeaters 
memorizing and transmitting them, until 250 
B.C., when King Asoka ordered them to be 
committed to writing. The quotations se- 
lected indicate the views of Gotama on the 
caste system, asceticism, temperance and re- 
liance on reason as contrasted with external 
authority and tradition : — 

"My doctrine makes no distinction between 
high and low, rich and poor, it is like the sky, 
it has room for all and like water it washes all 
alike. 

" Ananda coming to a well asked a girl of the 
despised caste of the Tschandalas for a drink of 
water. But she, fearing a gift from her hands 
would make him unclean, declined. Where- 
upon Ananda said : My sister," I did not ask 
concerning thy caste or thy family, I beg water 
of thee if thou canst give it to me. To him in 
whom love dwells the whole world is but one 
family. Hatred is never overcome by hatred, 
this is an ancient rule. The greatest victor is 

53 



GEEAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

he who conquers himself. Overcome evil with 
good and lying with truth. As the lotus-flower 
rises immaculate from the muddy water of the 
marsh, so a man may rise from the impurity of 
the surrounding world. Not abstinence from 
fish or meat, not wearing rough garments, not 
offering sacrifices, can make a man pure. Your 
low desires are in you and you make your 
outside clean. 

"And the Blessed One thus addressed the five 
Bhikkhus (disciples) : There are two extremes, 
O Bhikkhus, which he who has givien up the 
world ought to avoid. What are these two 
extremes ? A life given to pleasures and lusts, 
for this is degrading, sensual, vulgar; and a 
life given to mortifications, for this is painful, 
ignoble, and profitless. By avoiding these 
two extremes, O Bhikkhus, the Tathagata has 
gained the knowledge of the Middle Path which 
leads to insight, which leads to wisdom, which 
conduces to calm, to knowledge, to Nirvana. 

" And the Blessed One, calling his disciples 
unto him, delivered unto them this command- 
ment: — . 

54 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

"Go ye forth, O brethren, and wander over 
the world, for the sake of the many, for the 
welfare of the many, out of compassion for the 
world, for the good and the weal and the gain of 
gods and men. . . . Proclaim the teaching 
lovely in its origin, lovely in its progress, and 
lovely in its consummation, both in the spirit 
and in the letter. Set forth the higher life in 
all its fulness and in all its purity. 

"Be ye lamps unto yourselves, betake your- 
selves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the 
truth as a lamp, hold fast as a refuge to the 
truth. Whosoever shall be a lamp unto them- 
selves, looking not for refuge to any one besides 
themselves, it is they who shall reach the top- 
most height. 

" Behold now. I exhort you, brethren : work 
out your own salvation with diligence." This 
was the last word of the Blessed One.^ 

Karma and reincarnation connote ideas com- 
mon to both Brahmanism and Buddhism and 
are inseparably associated in their respective 
theories of human progress. Without paus- 

» Sacred Books of the East, Vol. X, p. 146 sq. 
55 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

ing to diflferentiate these theories, let it suffice 
simply to indicate the source of the belief in 
reincarnation. It derives directly from the 
Vedic religion of the primitive Aryans. Specu- 
lating on death and what comes after death, the 
successors of the poet-priests who composed 
the "Rig- Veda" could not find entire satisfac- 
tion in their conception of future reward as 
immortal residence among the gods in para- 
dise. They grew sceptical and nervous about 
the continuance of their life in heaven. What 
if the good deeds done on earth warrant only a 
limited life of bliss among the gods ? What 
if, over there, instead of eternal life there be 
death again, the good deeds having only tem- 
porary value and not guaranteeing immor- 
tality at all ? In that case there will surely be 
death again, and if man can die in heaven once, 
why not many times ? From such reflections 
it was but a single step to the belief that 
the law of compensation operates, not in the 
unknown heaven, but here on the familiar 
earth, death and rebirth occurring again and 
again until sin and virtue have adequately and 

56 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

completely received their respective punish- 
ment and reward, each death followed by re- 
birth into a condition determined by the net 
result of conduct in all earlier lives. Thus in 
the course of practically endless reincarnations 
the average man gets his deserts, until at last 
there is release from the round of deaths and 
rebirths. And this is salvation or "Nirvana," 
the cessation of rebirth into an evil, sorrowing, 
suffering, death-destined world. 

In the evolution of this theory of reincarna- 
tion the doctrine of Karma played an indispen- 
sable and inalienable part. For Karma means 
not only deed, but also the effect of deed on the 
subsequent character of the doer. The think- 
ing and the thought, the doing and the act, all 
pass away, but not without leaving enduring 
traces on the character. These are called 
"samskaras" i,e. deed-structures, the direct 
product of Karma. Actions are like seeds that 
bear fruit, some early, some late, in the course 
of man's successive rebirths. 

For, according to Buddhistic belief, as we 
have just seen, when a man dies, he is reborn 

57 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

into precisely the condition he has deserved as 
a result of his conduct in earlier lives, and he 
continues to be reborn until he has been fully 
punished for every sin and fully rewarded for 
every virtue. Every act produces its sams- 
kara and the preservation of the samskaras 
makes rebirth possible. Karma being the mys- 
terious law which binds each life to the one next 
preceding it. Moreover, no one has any recol- 
lection of a previous existence, and therefore 
no one has any knowledge as to how his moral 
account stands or as to what his next incarna- 
tion will be. But let him live the unselfish 
life, let him undergo a systematic course of 
self-discipline such as the Buddha outlined, 
and after successive reincarnations, he will 
have "squared" his moral account and for him 
rebirth will cease. Thus by a process of 
"automatic, psychic evolution" man reaches 
at last the state called "Nirvana," saved for- 
ever after from the possibility of rebirth. 

Such, in brief, bare outline is the exoteric 
doctrine of Karma and reincarnation, as taught 
by Gotama. Exoteric, not esoteric, it most 

58 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

assuredly was. Not veiled, but naked truth 
did he wish to teach, as is clearly and conclu- 
sively proved by the following passage from 
that part of the "Pitakas" called the "Book 
of the Great Decease," a passage that shows 
how misleading is the notion to which A. P. 
Sinnett gave currency in his "Esoteric Bud- 
dhism." 

"I have preached the truth without making 
any distinction between exoteric and esoteric 
doctrine ; for in respect of the truth, Ananda, 
the Tathagata has no such thing as the closed 
fist of a teacher who keeps some things back. 
It may be, brethren, that there may be doubt 
or misgiving in the mind of some brother as to 
the Buddha, or the truth, or the path. En- 
quire freely, brethren, do not have to reproach 
yourselves afterwards with the thought, our 
teacher was face to face with us and we failed 
to enquire of the Blessed One when we were 
thus face to face with him." ^ 

In the one hundred and eighty-six dialogues 
that have come down to us, his theory of sal- 

1 Sacred Books of the East. Vol. XI, pp. 36, 113. 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

vation is fully expounded, and to these I must 
refer you for details upon which time fails me 
to touch. Fundamental to his scheme of 
salvation is acceptance and appreciation of 
"the four noble truths." However much 
Buddhists may differ on other points, they all 
are agreed on these. To quote the language of 
Gotama as recorded in the Pitakas : "It is 
through not understanding and grasping four 
noble truths, O brethren, that we have had to 
run so long, to wander so long in this weary 
path of reincarnation, both you and I. And 
what are these four ? 

"First: The noble truth about suffering. 
Birth is painful, disease is painful, death is 
painful, contact with the unpleasant is painful 
and painful is separation from the pleasant. 

" Second : The noble truth about the cause 
of suffering. Verily it is this thirst or craving, 
causing the renewal of existence, the craving 
for the gratification of the passions, or the 
craving for a future life, or for success in this 
life. 

" Third : The noble truth of the cessation of 

60 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

suflFering. Verily it is the quenching of this 
very thirst, the laying aside of this thirst. 

" Fourth : The noble truth concerning the 
path that leads to the cessation of suffering. 
Verily it is the noble eightfold path, viz. : — 

" 1. Right views : free from superstition or 
delusion. 

" 2. Right aims : high and worthy of an in- 
telligent, earnest man. 

" 3. Right speech : kindly, open, truthful. 

" 4. Right conduct : peaceful, honest, pure. 

" 5. Right livelihood : bringing hurt or dan- 
ger to no living thing. 

"6. Right effort : in self -training or in self- 
control. 

" 7. Right mindfulness : the active, watchful 
mind. 

"8. Right contemplation : earnest thought 
on the deep mysteries of life," — Karma, Sams- 
karas, etc. 

How tame and prosaic this list must have 
seemed to a people steeped in ceremonialism, 
fasting and penances ! How tame and pro- 
saic, perchance, it appears to us unless we 

61 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

happen to know all that is involved in each of 
the eight steps on "the noble path." As an 
index of their wealth of ethical and philosophi- 
cal content let me synopsize the first of the 
eight, "Right Views," as expounded at length 
in the forty-third dialogue and, more briefly, 
in the ninth. The man of right views is free 
from superstition, free from erroneous theories 
of the world, God and the soul. He realizes 
the impermanence of everything and of every 
being, whether human or divine. He knows 
that nothing permanently is, that everything 
becomes, that the world-stujBF is eternal, that 
out of it all things and beings came, we know 
not how ; and that it is a foolish waste of time 
to try to find out, because the main concern of 
men should be to attain "Arahatship," that 
blessed state attainable, here on earth, in 
which, as a result of faithful allegiance to the 
eightfold noble path one is prepared for Nir- 
vana and saved from the possibility of rebirth. 
The man of right views understands that while 
it is legitimate to argue from one cause to 
the next, he cannot hope to reach an ultimate 

62 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

cause. Life he knows is a wheel, causation a 
chain, beginning with ignorance, "unconscious 
productive ignorance" (the unconscious "will 
to live") from which spring consciousness, sen- 
sation, thirst, attachment, birth, suflFering, 
old age, death, rebirth; Karma, the fruit of 
one's deeds, being the link that binds each life 
with its predecessor. The man of right views 
understands that there is no reality corre- 
sponding to "soul" as a permanent, human 
entity, and that the notion of its final absorp- 
tion into Brahma, the Oversoul, is also erro- 
neous. For this latter, he knows to be just 
as unreal as the soul. Again, the man of right 
view^s understands what is evil and what is good 
and the roots of each. He knows the basis of 
bodily and mental life, how they originate and 
how they ultimately cease. As a result, he 
gets rid of sensuality and of ill-will toward 
others. Moreover, he knows what suflFering 
is, its cause and its cessation, how it is bound 
up with the temporary individuality that re- 
sults from the evanescent union of the five 
"Skandas" or groups of qualities that make 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

up each individual (corporeity, consciousness, 
sensations, feelings, desires). He knows how 
suflFerings result from desire and how it ceases 
only after he has entered on the eightfold 
noble path at the entrance to which are the 
four noble truths. He perceives the "fetters," 
or failings, all of which are sloughed off in 
" Arahatship," the vestibule of Nirvana. And 
when he knows all this his insight is right, his 
views are correct and the man is endowed with 
an abiding sense of truth. 

Thus the philosophy of Gotama is funda- 
mentally pessimistic. The world is evil and 
the problem is to escape rebirth into such a 
world. Behind the programme of ethical self- 
discipline lies the utilitarian motive of escape, 
to be contrasted with that higher and only 
worthy motive, viz., to approximate an ideal 
that gives worth to life. In the dialogue on 
"Right Aims" Gotama ranks them according 
to their relative worth, placing mere physical 
sustenance lowest in the scale of aims and rat- 
ing highest of all the emancipation of the heart 
from lust, ill-will and all forms of hatred and 

64 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

selfishness. And, again, by "Right Effort," 
he did not mean the kind that insures material 
success, but rather a steady, persistent, un- 
flagging endeavor to make progress in the 
ethical zone of our being. Differ from Gotama 
as we may, in his theory of the universe and of 
the soul, in his doctrine of Karma and rein- 
carnation and in the pessimism whence these 
originate, yet when he aflSrms that to live the 
ethical life is the sole and certain guarantee 
of welfare now and in any other world that 
may await us we all respond with a sincere and 
hearty "amen." 

So bent was the Buddha on turning men's 
thoughts away from fruitless speculation on 
the location and nature of Nirvana to the cry- 
ing needs of the living present that he refused 
again and again to answer the question, 
Where and what is Nirvana ? Invariably he 
pointed to the path that leads thither, bidding 
the inquirer concentrate upon the eight pre- 
requisites of salvation. In the same spirit 
and from a like motive Jesus, when asked 
"Are there few that be saved ? " replied, 
!• 65 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

''Strive to enter in." Be not anxiously con- 
cerned about the population of heaven, but 
rather seek so to live as to be worthy of resi- 
dence there. 

Nowhere in the "Pitakas" do we find Nir- 
vana defined in positive terms. Gotama's 
allusions to it, as recorded in the Buddhist 
Bible, are all negative. No wonder, then, that 
speculation became rife as to the meaning he 
gave the word. In Sanskrit and Pali diction- 
aries it is simply a generic term for "salva- 
tion" and, as such, admits of various specific 
interpretations. Childers and Oldenberg are 
of the opinion that to Gotama Nirvana meant 
annihilation. Max Muller contended that it 
described an "absolute peace of soul of which 
the repose of the saint is a foretaste." Rhys- 
Davids holds that the term signifies a perfec- 
tion to be attained in this life and has nothing 
to do with the hereafter. But Gotama gave 
out no positive information, describing Nir- 
vana simply as that blessed state in which re- 
birth is forever impossible. This much, how- 
ever, we are warranted in saying: if there 

66 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

be conscious personal survival of death, then 
the very most that Nirvana could mean for us 
would be "a temporary resting-place for tired 
souls." Once rested and refreshed, we would 
wish to resume our climb, for life is not static 
but dynamic, imperfect, incomplete; nor is 
there any place for a doctrine of rest save one 
that is harmonious with the possibility of end- 
less growth toward that image of the perfect 
in which we all were potentially made. Only 
such a spiritual conception of life can be worthy 
our acceptance, looking on each new height 
to which we climb as only the vantage ground 
from which we ascend to some higher manifes- 
tation of power, the spiritual content of our life 
enriched and deepened with every new alti- 
tude we attain. 

Gotama's aversion to discussing Nirvana 
was matched by his distaste for dealing with 
theism. For this, too, seemed to him an in- 
soluble problem. So far as the Buddhism of 
Gotama is concerned, it was practically athe- 
istic in that he recognized no supreme deity 
but only the various gods of the Brahmanic 

67 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

pantheon (Indra, Agni, Savitri, etc.), and as 
these, like human beings, were subject to the 
law of Karma and rebirth, worship of them 
was obviously impossible. "Better," he said, 
"homage to a man grounded in the Dhamma 
than to Agni for a hundred years." The place 
above all finite deities Gotama left vacant, 
holding that a solution of the theistic problem 
lies outside the pale of human possibilities. 

Clearly, then, the message of this great ori- 
ental leader was essentially ethical, practical, 
humanitarian. And this is all the more ap- 
parent when we turn to hiiS ten commandments. 
Comparing them with the Decalogue of the 
Old Testament we note : — 

1. "Ye shall slay no living thing" = "thou 
shalt not kill." 

2. "Ye shall not take that which is not 
given " = "thou shalt not steal." 

3. "Ye shall not act wrongfully touching the 
bodily desires" = "thou shalt not commit 
adultery." 

4. "Ye shall speak no lie" — no equivalent 
in the Decalogue. 

68 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

5. "Ye shall drink no maddening drink" — 
no equivalent in the Decalogue. 

These five were binding on clergy and laity- 
alike, but the remaining five were imposed on 
the clergy alone : — 

6. "Accept no gold or silver.** 

7. "Shun luxurious beds." 

8. "Abstain from late meals." 

9. "Avoid public amusements." 

10. "Abstain from expensive dress." 

One is led to wonder why three of these five 
were not made equally binding upon the laity. 
But so far as our western civilization is con- 
cerned we all must agree that they might well 
be added to the Decalogue and given a place 
in that compilation of universal ethical com- 
mandments to which each of the world's great 
religions contributes a share. Nor is this all 
that may be said as to the practical bearing of 
Gotman's gospel upon the moral needs of the 
modern Occident. In these days of theological 
reconstruction, when men and women of afflu- 
ence and influence are seen selling their intel- 
lectual birthright for the pottage of social 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

position, popular favor and business success, 
supporting by their presence and purse churches 
whose creeds they disown, the need is to hear 
again the powerful plea of Gotama that men 
should be sincere and free in their religious 
thinking, "betake themselves to no external 
refuge, but hold fast to the truth as to a 
lamp." In these days of high living and low 
thinking on the part of thousands, immersed 
as they are in a practical materialism, which 
means gratification of the senses, creature- 
comforts and starvation of the spirit, what 
better thing can we do than point to Gotama's 
teaching on temperance, the "middle path" 
which steers clear of sensualism and asceticism 
alike, and "which leads to insight, to wisdom, 
and to calm " ? In these days when snobbish- 
ness, class pride and exclusiveness reveal the 
un-American elements in our civilization, 
surely we do well to recall the ringing words of 
India's prophet of democracy: "My religion 
makes no distinction between high and low, 
rich and poor. It is like the sky; it has room 
for all and, like water, it washes all alike. To 

70 



GOTAMA, THE BUDDHA 

hini in whom love dwells the whole world is 
but one family." 

By putting his emphasis on character rather 
than on creed, on temperance as superior to 
asceticism and the safeguard against sensual- 
ism ; by presenting the "brotherhood of man" 
as the ideal human relationship; by fixing at- 
tention on this life and its pressing needs and 
refusing to answer questions concerning the 
hereafter; by teaching that "every man must 
work out his own salvation with diligence," 
Gotama, the Buddha, bequeathed to the race 
precepts and an example that will be an in- 
spiration for all peoples and for all time. 



71 



ra 

ZOROASTER 



m 

ZOROASTER 

TT^ORTY centuries ago the ancestors of 
Gotama, the Buddha, migrated to India 
from beyond the Himalayas, near the sources 
of the river Oxus. Prior to this migration 
there was a period known as the **Indo- 
Iranian," Iran being the name of ancient 
Persia. A prehistoric period it is, in which the 
Indians and the Iranians occupied common 
ground, spoke a common language and had 
one and the same religion. Back of this 
period, again, was the "Indo-European," 
when the language, literature and religion of 
those who came to be known as Hindus, . Par- 
sees, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Celts, Slavs, 
were one. In other words, from the original 
Aryan home on the tablelands of central Asia 
there spread in seven successive migrations 
the tribes that have peopled Europe and most 

75 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

of Asia. Of these migrations the two earliest 
were those to India in the southwest and to 
Persia in the southeast. A romantic interest 
attaches to these separated peoples who, soon 
after settling down on either side of the great 
central Asiatic mountain-chain, lost all con- 
sciousness of their kinship and of the fact that 
they once had a common home. The Hindu 
"Vedas" know nothing of the Persian "Aves- 
ta," nor does the latter show any knowledge of 
what was going on across the Himalaya 
mountains in India. Yet we can translate the 
language of the one people into that of the other 
by an easy system of sound changes. In the 
course of several centuries the religion of these 
two peoples became increasingly unlike. Hin- 
duism is monistic, pessimistic, speculative; 
bent on finding a way of escape from the weary 
round of existences and believing it is found 
in realizing that Brahma, the soul of the uni- 
verse, is the only true and permanent reality, 
and that all human finite souls are but passing 
realities, to be absorbed at last into Brahma 
through this very realization of their own im- 

76 



ZOROASTER 

permanence and the perpetuity of Brahma 
alone. The Persian religion is dualistic, op- 
timistic, unphilosophic, yet deeply ethical and 
spiritual, and has produced very superior 
types of human life. 

Thus the primitive Aryan religion diverging 
in two directions, resulted in the religion of 
ancient India and that of ancient Persia. 
And just as the warm, benignant climate and 
the rich fruitful soil of western India fostered 
a brooding, speculative tendency, giving the 
religion of the country that characteristic 
against which Gotama protested, so the less 
favorable environment of Iran necessitated 
industry, precluded speculation and gave to 
the religion of the country the unique emphasis 
which it puts on work and the relation of work 
to** salvation." 

Persia's place among the nations of antiquity 
was second only to that of Greece and Rome. 
As an index of her greatness recall the fact that 
in the fifth century before our era she had come 
into possession of Assyria and Babylonia and 
held the Hebrews under her sway both at home 

77 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

and abroad. Egypt, Scythia, India, Greece, 
all were politically controlled by "edicts" 
from the Persian capital. So great was Per- 
sia's power at this time that the late Max 
Mliller went so far as to say that if the battles 
of Marathon and Salamis had been lost to 
Greece, Zoroastrianism, which was the state 
religion of the Persian empire, would have be- 
come the religion of the civilized world. In 
other words, if by the grace of the Persian 
god, Ahura-Mazda, Darius had been vic- 
torious over Alexander the Great, belief in 
the Olympian deities and myths would never 
have replaced the teachings of Zoroaster. But 
Persia did not go down to permanent defeat. 
A thousand years later she was once more in 
the ascendant, till the year 641, when the Mo- 
hammedan invasion established Islam where 
Zoroastrianism had reigned. The great ma- 
jority of the faithful refused to accept the new 
religion and were forthwith punished with exile. 
They found a refuge in the northwestern part 
of India, now known as the presidency of 
Bombay. There, to-day, one may see the 

78 



ZOROASTER 

descendants of those exiles, numbering nearly 
100,000 souls ; a people world-renowned for 
their intellectual and moral worth and for the 
perfervid enthusiasm with which they per- 
petuate the religion of their fathers ; a religion 
that has contributed several important doc- 
trines to Christianity, through Judaism; a 
religion that has left its solemn record, not 
only in the pages of the "Avesta" and on the 
giant ruins at Persepolis, but also in the high- 
toned lives of the Zoroastrian colony at Bom- 
bay. On the influence of this religion upon 
New Testament theology we shall not have 
time to dwell. Suflice it only to say that the 
angelologjs demonology, eschatology and doc- 
trine of rewards and punishments, found in the 
Christian Bible are closely related to the teach- 
ing of the Avesta and in some measure trace- 
able to that source. 

Carlyle once said, "Great men have short 
biographies . ' ' In the case of Zoroaster we h ave 
the shortest of all. Less is known of him than 
of any other of the great moral leaders of the 
Orient. The " Spend-Nask," of the Avesta, 

79 



GBEAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

which contained the story of his Hfe has been 
almost entirely lost. Meagre as is the au- 
thentic information we have concerning Jesus, 
what we positively know about Zoroaster is 
still less. Legends there are, corresponding 
to those of the New Testament Apocrypha, 
and precisely as these produced doubt of the 
historicity of Jesus, so the earlier legends gave 
rise to the suspicion that no such person as 
Zoroaster ever lived. But this extreme posi- 
tion is not generally accepted among scholars, 
for Zoroaster is too deeply rooted in tradition 
to be wholly discredited. Moreover these very 
legends testify, as does nothing else, to the 
essential greatness of his personality. He is 
represented as holding intercourse with the 
deity. At his appearance all Nature rejoices. 
He enters into conflict with demons and drives 
them off the face of the earth. Angro-Mainyus 
(Satan) approaches, tempting him to renounce 
his religion. The Gods initiate him into his 
prophetic oflSce and act as guardians through- 
out his public career.^ Say what we will of these 

1 Yasht, 13, 17. Vendidad, 19. 
80 




ZOROASTER. 



ZOROASTER 

legends the fact remains that no such wonder 
stories are ever told of men of ordinary mould. 
The name Zoroaster is a corruption of 
"Zarathushtra," and signifies *' possessor of 
camels." His father's name was Pouru- 
shaspa, a member of the Cpitama family. 
Neither the place, year, month nor day of his 
birth is known. A double tradition regarding 
his birthplace warrants us in believing that 
Bactria, the modern Afghanistan, was the prov- 
ince in which he was born, though the testimony 
is conflicting as to the town. The date of his 
birth has been set as far back as 6000 B.C. and 
as far forward as 300 B.C. and though scholar- 
ship is still divided on the subject, there is 
an increasing tendency to regard 600 B.C. as 
approximately correct. From the "Gathas" 
(the earliest portion of the Avesta) we learn 
that Zoroaster was a husband and a father, a 
warrior and a farmer. Here also is recorded 
the legend of his "call" to become a moral 
leader, reformer and founder of a new re- 
ligion. One day, so the story reads, the cry 
of the oppressed peasants of Bactria went up 
G 81 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

to Heaven. The celestial host hearing the cry 
promptly held a conference at the throne of 
the supreme god Ahura Mazda. Whereupon 
it was voted to call Zoroaster to deliver the 
oppressed people. But, on receiving the di- 
vine summons, he hesitates, as did Gotama 
and Jesus, on the eve of their assuming the 
prophetic role. Finally Zoroaster accepts the 
call and goes forth to preach the will of Ahura 
Mazda, as against that of the false gods 
(devas) of the oppressors who promptly be- 
came ''devils" (dacvas) in the eyes of the 
Zoroastrians. Froin the Gathas, too, we learn 
of the poor success that attended Zoroaster's 
first public preaching and of his visit to King 
Vishtaspa, who gave him his patronage and 
protection, who ''broke with his weapon a 
path for the truth" and became the arm and 
support of the Zoroastrian faith, raising it 
to power and spreading it abroad.^ 

As the representative of Ahura Mazda, 
Zoroaster is the first annunciator of that moral 
triad which constitutes the corner-stone of the 

1 Yasht, 13. 
82 



ZOROASTER 

faith: "humata, hukhta, hvarshta" — good 
thoughts, good words, good deeds. In that 
same capacity Zoroaster is the first priest of 
the sacred fire. Just here let me interject a 
word of caution against the popular habit of 
regarding the Parsees as "fire- worshippers." 
That is a? serious a mistake as to call the Bud- 
dhists "idol-worshippers," the Hindus "sun- 
worshippers," or the Christians "cross-wor- 
shippers." When the Hindu said, "O Savitri, 
thou Sun," he was not thinking of the fiery 
ball that rises over the Himalayas and sets 
behind the Indus, but rather of the power 
within or behind the sun, responsible for every 
function it fulfils. When the Christian kneels 
before his crucifix, it is simply as an aid to 
spiritual concentration, the real object of his 
worship being the Christ, or God, or the Virgin 
Mary, as the case may be. Similarly, to the 
Parsees fire serves a symbolical function. 
Well do I remember the language of the la- 
mented Jeneghier D. Cola, the distinguished 
representative of Zoroastrianism at the World's 
Parliament of Religions, when discussing with 

83 



GEEAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

him the meaning of fire as a religious symbol. 
"While our eyes are fixed on the sacred flame 
our hearts are humbled before Ahura Mazda, 
our God." To the Parsees fire is the most per- 
fect symbol of deity. Its purity, its power, its 
refulgence, its incorruptibility, its glory,— each 
of these suggests an attribute of their deity 
and so they keep the sacred flame constantly 
burning, as a helpful symbol, an aid in concen- 
trating their thought upon their God. This 
choice of fire as the supreme symbol of deity 
illustrates the influence of environment upon 
religious ideas. Iran was a veritable fire- 
country, bespread with naphtha springs, sur- 
rounded by burning mountains, overhung with 
meteoric lights and stars that shone through 
the clear atmosphere so brilliantly as to seem 
articulate with spiritual meaning and sug- 
gestion. In the twenty-fourth " Yasht" of the 
Avesta we read of "the holy Zarathushtra," 
who first thought what was good, spoke what 
was good, did what was good; who was the 
first Priest, the first Warrior, the first Plougher 
of the ground ; who first knew and first taught 

84 



ZOROASTER 

the word of Holiness and obedience to the 
Word ; who had a revelation of the Lord ; in 
whose birth and growth the waters and plants 
rejoiced and all the creatures of the good crea- 
tion cried out, Hail ! ^ 

Just how the gospel of Zoroaster came to be 
differentiated from that of his Aryan brethren 
is still an open, unsolved question. Some 
years ago there was much promising speculation 
concerning it, and it is certain to be revived 
with the discovery of new material, as has oc- 
curred again and again since Duperron made 
his famous find in 1754. That the once twin 
peoples (Indian and Iranian) later quarrelled 
theologically, on matters of creed and ritual, no 
one doubts. In all probability the split harks 
back to the jealousy of the less favored com- 
munity, reviling the local deity which showed 
favoritism to their more prosperous neighbor. 
But be this as it may, it is clear from certain 
passages in the Avesta that Zoroaster did not 
agree with those of his compatriots who re- 
garded penances, prayers, sacrifices and fast- 

1 Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XXIII, pp. 201-202. 
85 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

ings as of paramount importance in religion, 
and who thought it right to pass half the day 
in begging food in order that the remainder 
might be spent under a shady tree in undis- 
turbed meditation and prayer. From all this 
he recoiled, holding that prayer should always 
be a means, never an end; that work is the 
completing of prayer, the hands fulfilling the 
prayer of the heart ; that industry is more than 
meditation ^and settle4^ agricultural life better 
than wandering nomadic life. Such were the 
aflSrmations which supplemented the negations 
of Zoroaster's protest and insured the life of 
his reform. All who agreed with him settled 
down on the plains of Iran. For their encour- 
agement and inspiration Zoroaster made known 
to them a great saying which he declared had 
been revealed to him by Ahura Mazda : " Four 
places on earth are most dear to me. First, 
where the sacred fire burns. Second, where 
homes are established, with wife and children, 
with fire and plenty. Third, where the most 
corn and fruit are raised. Fourth, where dry 

lands are irrigated and marshy lands drained." 

86 



ZOROASTER 

What a mighty inspiration it must have been to 
those people, who had settled on a soil that re- 
quired persistent and arduous labor to make it 
productive and life-sustaining, to hear that 
the very place of their abode was most pleas- 
ing to their God ! 

Small wonder that this great moral leader 
should advocate industry and teach the dignity, 
nay, the sacred efBcacy of work. Turn to the 
"Vendidad," the "Leviticus" of the Avesta, 
and note there the emphasis laid on character 
and on work as a sacred duty. 

"Contend constantly against evil, strive 
in every way to diminish the power of evil; 
strive to keep pure in body and mind and so 
prevent the entrance of evil spirits who are 
always trying to gain possession of men. Cul- 
tivate the soil, drain marshes, destroy danger- 
ous creatures. He who sows the ground with 
diligence acquires more religious merit than he 
could gain by a thousand prayers in idleness. 
Diligence in thy occupation is the greatest 
good work. To sew patch on patch is better 
than begging rich men for clothing. The man 

87 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

who has constantly contended against evil 
may fearlessly meet death. Death being a 
fact, have no fear of it, fear only not having 
lived well enough. Indulge not in slothful 
sleep lest the work which needs to be done 
remains undone. The cock lifts up his voice 
with every splendid dawn and cries: Arise, ye 
men, and destroy the demon that would put 
back the world in sleep. Long sleeping be- 
comes you not, arise, 'tis day; who rises first 
comes first to paradise ! In whom does Ahura 
Mazda rejoice ? In him who adorns the earth 
with grain and grass, who dries up moist 
places and waters dry places. He who tills 
the ground is as good a servant of religion as 
he who offers ten thousand prayers in idle- 
ness. He is a holy man who has built him a 
home in which are wife and children and the 
sacred fire. Whoso cultivates barley culti- 
vates virtue. When the wheat appears the 
demons hiss, when the grain is ripe they flee in 
rage. He who does not eat has not strength 
to live rightly nor to work." ^ 

iVendidad, XVIII, III. 
88 



ZOROASTER 

These quotations show the emphasis placed 
by Zoroaster on work and also the reason for it. 
Work, according to his theory of the universe, 
is the most eflfective agent for destroying the 
power of Angro Mainyus, the ultimate source of 
all evil in the world. Behind his ethics Zoroas- 
ter had a clear-cut theology the substance of 
which is that the universe is under the control of 
two opposing principles or powers, the one good, 
the other evil; the one, Ahura Mazda, or 
Ormuzd ; the other, Angro Mainyus, or Ahri- 
man. Ahura Mazda created the beautiful 
world of Nature and of Man. Then Angro 
Mainyus crept into the good creation and 
marred it by matching every beautiful thing 
with a counter-creation of something evil. 
The " Vendidad" opens with an account of this 
alternating process: "I, O Zarathushtra Spi- 
tama, made the first best place, which is 
Airy ana Va^jah; thereupon Afigra Mainyu 
(the Evil Spirit) created a counter creation, a 
serpent in the river, and frost made by the 
demons. . . . The third place which I, Ahura 
Mazda, made the best was Mouru ; thereupon 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

Angra Mainyu (the Evil Spirit) created a 
counter creation, which was backbiting and 
lust. . . . The fifth place which I, Ahura 
Mazda, made the best was Nis^ya ; thereupon, 
in opposition to it, Angra Mainyu (the Evil 
Spirit), full of death, created a counter crea- 
tion, which was the curse of unbelief 

As the seventh place I, who am Ahura Mazda, 
created Va^kereta, . . . thereupon, in opposi- 
tion to it, Aiigra Mainyu (the Evil Spirit), 
full of death, created the evil fairy who clave 
to Keresaspa. ... As the ninth place, I, 
who am Ahura Mazda, created Klinenta as 
the best . . . thereupon Angra Mainyu (the 
Evil Spirit) created a counter creation, the 
inexpiable deed of Sodomy." 

Note that Angro-Mainyus is not introduced 
as a creation of Ahura-Mazda. Just who cre- 
ated him, or whence he came, we are not told. 
This holds equally true of the Hebrew "Sa- 
tan." 

There is, then, this conflict between the two 
opposing powers. A great cleft runs through 
the entire world, dividing it into two realms, 

90 



ZOROASTER 

the two controlling powers counter-balancing 
each other. Yet this dualism is neither abso- 
lute nor eternal. Rather is it "an episode 
in the existence of Ormuzd," for he is the su- 
preme and only god ; omnipresent, omniscient, 
but not yet omnipotent, because coeval with 
him, though not coeternal, is Ahriman. In 
other words, Zoroaster's dualism is temporary. 
He was fundamentally a monotheist, believing 
(as did Jesus) that a deliverer from all evil, 
a "Saoshyant," or Messiah, would finally 
come and God's (Ahura-Mazda's) kindgom be 
all in all. At his advent the great "world- 
fire" will be started. In molten metal will all 
good souls be painlessly perfected and all 
wicked ones be utterly consumed, but to the 
pure, "it will seem as though they were bath- 
ing in warm milk." Then will the eternal 
Kingdom of the Good be ushered in and eternal 
bliss bless a renovated world. In the " Gathas " 
we read : "Now will I proclaim to you who are 
drawing near and wish to be taught those 
things that pertain to Him who knows all 
things. And I pray that propitious results 

91 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

may be seen. Hear ye then with your ears, 
awake ye to our teaching ! " 

"The primeval spirits who as a pair have 
been famed of old are a better and a worse as 
to thought, word and deed. Between these two 
let the wisely-acting choose aright. Choose 
ye not as the evildoers ! . . . And when the 
great struggle shall have been fought out then, 
O Mazda, the Kingdom shall have been gained 
for Thee ! And may we be such as those 
who bring on this great renovation and make 
the world progressive till its perfection shall 
have been reached. And when perfection 
shall have been attained, then will the blow of 
destruction fall upon the Demon of Falsehood, 
but swiftest in the happy abode of Ahura, the 
righteous saints shall gather. Wherefor, O 
ye men, learn the blessings that are in store 
for the righteous." ^ 

According to Zoroaster, then, the world is a 
battle-field on which every human being is a 
soldier, fighting on the side of Ahura-Mazda 
and his archangels and angels, or on the side 

1 Sacred Books of the East. Vol. XXXI, pp. 28-35. 
92 



ZOROASTER 



of Angro-Mainyus and his archdemons and 
demons. The weapons used by the good sol- 
diers are not swords but ploughshares; not guns, 
but good thoughts, good words, good deeds. 

Over against the heavenly host stands the 
infernal host, each led by a commander- 
general, the object of the war being to gain 
possession of the soul of man. True, man was 
created by the good spirit, Ahura-Mazda, 
but it was as a free moral agent that He created 
him. Thus man, being susceptible to evil, 
may range himself on the evil side of the war, 
or on the good, identify himself with Ahriman 
or with Ormuzd and according as he chooses 
so will the issue be, for without man's coopera- 
tion victory remains a dream. 

If we could have asked Zoroaster the first 
question in the Presbyterian catechism, "What 
is the chief end of man.^" his answer would 
have been, not that of the Christian, " to glorify 
God and enjoy Him forever," nor that of the 
Buddhist, — to walk the eightfold path of 
escape from rebirth. Rather would Zoroas- 
ter's answer have been : to help Ahura-Mazda 

93 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

conquer the evil in the world, by work that 
shall keep pure the earth and the air, the body 
and the soul. The earth, he said, is a pure 
creation of God ; keep it pure by tilling it and 
allowing no noxious weeds to grow. Water is 
a pure creation of God ; do not pollute it by 
washing your hands or your linen in a running 
stream. If you see a corpse floating in a 
stream, remove it for it will pollute the water. 
Air is a pure creation of God ; keep it pure by 
ventilation, by dissipating noxious gases and 
destroying noxious insects. Fire is a pure 
creation of God ; keep it pure. Do not burn 
a dead body, lest you pollute the fire, do not 
bury it, lest you pollute the earth. How then, 
you ask, do the Parsees dispose of their dead ? 
On the "Towers of Silence," — circular stone 
structures, open to the sky. There on the 
parapet of the tower vultures, dedicated for 
the purpose, congregate and devour the flesh 
of the dead, their bones falling through the 
steel gratings on which the bodies are laid, 
into a pit of quicklime below. 

Believing in the sacred efficacy of work as 

94 



ZOROASTER 



the most powerful means for annihilating the 
sway of Angro-Mainyus, Zoroaster prohibited 
fasting, self-torture, excessive grief, everything 
calculated to enervate the body or to reduce 
the power of the will. In direct contrast to 
the Hinduism which made asceticism a virtue, 
this great moral leader looked upon it as a 
sin, and rightly so. For asceticism means a 
waste of positive power, and one's life is never 
made noble and fine by wasting its opportuni- 
ties, or by thwarting one's natural powers, or 
by crushing out normal desires. To be sure, 
in an age like ours, when a thousand things 
are inviting us to become immersed in the life 
of the senses, a measure of ascetic self -disci- 
pline is an excellent device for maintaining 
the balance of life. But, as a philosophy of 
life, asceticism falls short of the ideal, which is 
nothing less than the harmonious development 
of all the rich possibilities of our many-sided 
human nature in a rounded life. 

One sin there was, according to Zoroaster, 
worse than fasting, nay, the deadliest sin of 
all — suicide. The reason for his utter eon- 

95 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

demnation of this sin was that no one should 
ever allow the sacred flame of enthusiasm for the 
victory of the good to die out in his heart, nor 
should one ever be willing to reduce by even 
a single soldier the valiant army of warriors 
fighting under Ahura-Mazda for the destruc- 
tion of evil and its source. Stripped of its 
theological elements, where, I ask, shall we 
look for a worthier reason for self-preservation 
than this ? What a contrast between Zoro- 
aster's argument against suicide and Shak- 
spere's based on the belief, as expressed by 
Hamlet, that in taking our life we may be 
fleeing from present ills to others worse than 
those we know. What a contrast again to 
the Buddhistic view, that suicide is to be 
spurned because it is useless, rebirth being 
inevitable. Only the Zoroastrian motive is 
worthy to serve in the class of true and ade- 
quate deterrents. When General Booth ad- 
dressed the "Anti-Suicide League" of London, 
he drew, quite unconsciously, upon Zoroaster's 
double reason for denouncing suicide, holding 
this to be the sole valid motive to which 



ZOROASTER 

successful appeal can be made. We must stay- 
here on earth to be of service, and countless are 
the ways in which we can serve. 

Three commandments were given a supreme 
place in the moral code of Zoroaster: To speak 
the truth, to keep one's promises, and to keep 
out of debt. Ahriman is the father of lies and 
flourishes on the falsehoods of Ormuzd's chil- 
dren. Their unreliability and insolvency, wher- 
ever evidenced, increase the strength of Ahri- 
man and tend to lengthen his days. Hence 
the emphasis on veracity, reliability and finan- 
cial solvency as virtues fraught with power to 
promote the victory of Ormuzd over Ahriman. 

As an additional agency for the sure and 
speedy triumph of the good principle, Zoro- 
aster instituted an elaborate ceremonial, sup- 
plementing his gospel of work with ritualistic 
observances calculated to fortify the soul in its 
devotion to purity. In the "Vendidad" and 
in the "Vispered" of the Avesta, the forms 
and regulations of this ceremonial are recorded. 
As we read them we realize why it was that 
with all its ennobling and inspiring ethical 
H 97 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

teaching Zoroaster's religion was disqualified 
for becoming a universal religion. It was 
because of this intensely local, elaborate, 
detailed scheme of ritual, together with the 
demands it exacted of the worshipper and the 
complicated character of the theology involved. 
As a great moral leader Zoroaster brought to 
his people an ethics of personal life. To his 
hearers he said, in substance: Each one of you 
is a child of Ahura-Mazda. By birthright 
you belong to the Kingdom of the Good. You 
were created a free moral agent and are there- 
fore at liberty to choose between good and 
evil. But on your choice will depend your 
salvation and the joy of sharing with Ahura- 
Mazda the ultimate victory of the good. 
Moreover, the strictest account is kept of 
your thoughts, words and deeds. On the judg- 
ment day these will be weighed in the balance 
and your eternal destiny determined. Hence, 
it behooves you to choose the good life. To 
help you in making the choice Zoroaster was 
sent, teaching that God's will is that the good 
triumph over evil and that each human soul 

98 



ZOROASTER 



act as a cooperator with Him in the gigantic, 
age-long task of world redemption. Nor is 
there any higher source of inspiration for the 
conduct of life than just this conviction that 
you are cooperating with God unto this end, 
and that by so doing you are destined to share 
the joy in store for all who fight on the side 
of the sovereign lord, Ahura-Mazda. 

What a contrast between this gospel of "up 
and doing'' and the doctrine of meditation and 
fasting inculcated by the Brahmins w^hen the 
Buddha came to inaugurate his reform. What 
a contrast, too, between the optimistic aim of 
Zoroaster and the pessimistic aim of Gotama. 
For, whereas the latter sought to overcome 
existence in order that suffering, sorrow and 
re-birth may be ended, Zoroaster sought to 
overcome evil in order that existence might 
be glorified and transfigured. 

Concerning the hereafter Zoroaster's ideas 
were exceedingly definite and concrete. Ac- 
cording to his theory, the soul, on the third 
night after the body's decease, arrives at 
"Chinvat," the Bridge of Reckoning, across 

99 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

which Hes the road to Paradise. Two angels 
make up the account, weighing the soul's 
good and evil deeds in "just balances" that 
vary not a hair's breadth for either kings 
or subjects. If the good deeds outweigh the 
evil, the bridge is easy of passage, and the 
man's conscience, in the form of a beautiful 
maiden, comes to meet him and conduct him 
to Paradise. But in the case of the wicked the 
bridge narrows to the width of a razor-blade 
and he falls off, plunging headlong into hell.^ 
Should the good and the evil be equally bal- 
anced, the soul passes into an intermediate 
state of existence and its final destiny is not 
determined till the last judgment, when the 
"Saoshyant" will usher in the everlasting 
Kingdom of the Good. 

The beneficent influence of Zoroaster's ethics 
is attested in the writings of Herodotus, who 
refers in glowing terms to the nobility and 
purity of Parsee life in the time of Darius. It 
is evidenced, again, in the lives of the ten 

1 Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XXIII, pp. 134 ff.; Vol. XXIV, 
pp. 258 ff. 

100 



ZOROASTER 

thousand Zoroastrians in Afghanistan and also 
in the community at Bombay. Travellers 
tell us that these people exemplify to an excep- 
tional degree the teachings of their Master. 
Truthfulness, temperance, industriousness, 
commercial integrity and chastity are charac- 
teristics of their life. In the cities where they 
live, it is said, one does not meet with drunken 
men nor with women of the town, — the de- 
graded creatures that are seen on the streets of 
every Christian city. As for the generosity 
of the Parsees, it is unrivalled, extending far 
beyond the limits of Bombay. It went to 
Russia at the time of the Crimean War, when 
Florence Nightingale described the Zoroas- 
trian colony as ''the salt of the Bombay com- 
munity." It went to France in 1859, when 
the terrible inundations necessitated the sup- 
plementing of local aid by foreign help, and the 
Parsees were among the first to respond and 
among the most liberal of the contributors. 
It went to the United States at the time of the 
Civil War, our Sanitary Commission receiving 
a handsome remembrance from the followers 

101 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

of Zoroaster in India, sent, they said, because 
of their sympathy with the suffering soldiers 
and with the Cause of Freedom and union. A 
few decades ago an American Christian, Mr. 
George Peabody, held the record for generous 
giving to charity, but it was soon broken by a 
Bombay Parsee, who more than doubled the 
then record-gift. Such are some of the prac- 
tical results of the gospel of him whose birth- 
place and birthday we do not know, the details 
of whose career we do not know, but from 
whom an influence went forth that has been 
felt for twenty -four centuries or more, a great 
moral leader from whose mind and heart there 
flowed a stream of inspiration that has made 
glad the waste places of unnumbered lives and 
made the desert of drudgery and difficulty to 
blossom as the rose. It may be that in your 
home and in mine there is no altar dedicated 
to the keeping of the sacred fire, but surely on 
the spiritual altar of our hearts we may keep 
the sacred fire of purity aflame so that our lives, 
too, may be aglow with good thoughts, good 
words, good deeds. 

102 



IV 

CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 



IV 

CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

/^ OTAMA and Zoroaster belong to the 
^^^ Aryan branch of the human family, 
Confucius and Lao-Tze to the Turanian. 
Chief among the divisions of this branch is 
the Mongolian race of China; a people in 
whom the understanding has been more highly 
developed than the imagination, whose inter- 
ests are practical and ethical, rather than 
speculative and metaphysical ; whose con- 
cern is for order, decorum, propriety, mod- 
eration, rather than for meditation, prayer and 
spiritual songs ; a backward looking race, 
whose reverence for the past accounts fun- 
damentally for many characteristics of their 
present life. 

China is a country that supports nearly 
one-third of the human race and on an area 
equal to half that of the United States; a 

105 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

country with twenty-five hundred miles of 
coast-line and three immense river valleys, 
aggregating six thousand miles; a country 
that has witnessed the rise and fall of succes- 
sive civilizations, the oldest of which antedates 
the pyramids and the sphinx ; a country whose 
industry is world-renowned and symbolized 
by the gigantic wall, — twelve hundred miles 
long, twenty-five feet high, surmounted by a 
parapet on which six horsemen can ride abreast, 
built twenty centuries ago, yet its masonry 
still commanding the admiration of the world. 
Of the nature and variety of China's industry, 
let the achievements of Pekin and Nankin, 
Canton and Hong Kong tell. Nay, we have 
but to recall the fact that many of our English 
words for textile goods, such as silk, satin, nan- 
keen, are of Chinese origin, to appreciate the 
significance of that industry. China's watch- 
word has ever been "education" and though 
her educational system be open to criticism, 
it is well to remember that it has made for 
efficient government, tending to the total elimi- 
nation of nepotism and the spoils system by 

106 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

means of the civil service examinations re- 
quired of applicants for the great majority of 
governmental positions. China supports, be- 
sides a host of minor institutions of learning, 
the University of Pekin, whose student body 
nearly outnumbers that of our two largest 
universities combined. And the fundamental 
aim of all her education has been not so much 
learning as behavior. Hence it happens that, 
in some respects, the Chinese as a whole are 
the most moral people in the world. They 
are taught from childhood to rely on reason 
rather than on physical force for the vindica- 
tion of their rights. So high is the standard of 
business ethics that a paper contract is not 
necessary to bind a Chinese merchant. Eti- 
quette is scrupulously observed in every walk 
of life, making a regularly organized police 
force unnecessary. Politeness, deference to 
elders, respect for authority, are conspicuous 
traits in all classes of society. These, which 
are among the acknowledged marks of the high- 
est possible civilization, these, we find on a 
national scale in China. 

107 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

It seemed to me necessary to make these 
preliminary statements because we of the 
Occident are altogether too apt to think of the 
Chinese as a barbarous, or semi-civilized people 
remarkable for the peculiar arrangement of 
their hair/ their yellow skin and slanting 
eyes, their opium, debauchery and dirt. We 
forget that China has her centres of culture 
and refinement as well as her slums, and that 
she is no more to be judged by the denizens 
of these degraded districts than is America 
by the population of the corresponding quar- 
ters in her great cities. Let it be remembered 
that if China has her ** coolie" cooks and laun- 
dry folk and salmon-canners, she has also her 
magnificent men, of the stamp of Li-Hung- 
Chang, who has immortalized himself in the 
American heart by his touching memorial to 
General Grant ; men of the stamp of Minister 
Wu, who fairly electrified an immense audi- 
ence in Carnegie Hall by his candid discussion, 

^ The "queue" was forced on the Chinese by the Manchus in 
1644 ; but in response to the modern spirit the Manchus themselves 
are doing away with the queue. 

108 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

in a memorable address, of the relative merits 
of Confucianism and Christianity ; ^ men like 
Prince Pung Kwang Yu, author of a most 
scholarly and exhaustive essay on Confucian- 
ism, read at the World's Parliament of Re- 
ligions; men of the caliber of the regent. 
Prince Ch'un, who, on behalf of the infant 
emperor, on the second day of December, 
1908, inaugurated a new era in Chinese his- 
tory, issuing a decree in his Majesty's name, 
requiring all his subjects, on pain of extreme 
penalty, to assist in the gradual rehabilitation 
of the empire. And in this wonderful process 
of reorganization toward democracy we note 
the carefulness and caution, the far-sighted 
deliberation with which the work is being done, 
as contrasted with some of our precipitate 
methods, our frequent failure to "go slow 
round this curve" of social reform and the fond 
reliance of great masses of our people on one or 
another "panacea" for a complex situation 
that takes time. Out of its own national social 

1 Christianity was introduced into China by the Nestorians in 
636 A.D. 

109 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

thinking China is forming a new social ideal, 
and she no longer looks on her government 
as an unchangeable product of Nature, but 
rather as a progressive product of the national 
will, her development depending on the intelli- 
gent action of a free and educated people. 

But towering far above these celebrities 
whose names I have mentioned, and above all 
other splendid types of Chinese manhood, 
stands the supreme inspiration of the eighty 
or more millions who to-day profess Confu- 
cianism, — Kung-fu-tze, the Master Kung, 
or, as we have learned to call him, in the Latin- 
ized form of his name, Confucius. In strik- 
ing contrast to the little we know of Zoroaster's 
life stands the unparalleled fulness of detail 
concerning the life of Confucius. From our 
ultimate sources of information — the latest 
of the ''Kings" and the four "Books" — we 
are enabled to compile biographical facts far 
outnumbering those of any other of the great 
moral leaders of the Orient. Typical of the 
details concerning his life that have been re- 
corded I quote the following from the tenth 

110 





C.A 





LAO-TZE. 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

book of the "Lun Yu" : "He was nice in his 
diet, — not disliking to have his rice dressed 
fine, nor to have his minced meat cut small. 
He must have his meat cut properly, and to 
every kind its proper sauce ; but he was not a 
great eater. It was only in drink that he laid 
down no limit to himself, but he did not allow 
himself to be confused by it. On occasion of a 
sudden clap of thunder, or a violent wind, he 
would change countenance. At the sight of a 
person in mourning, he would also change 
countenance, and if he happened to be in his 
carriage, he would bend forward with a re- 
spectful salutation. His general way in his 
carriage was not to turn his head round, nor 
talk hastily, nor point with his finger. He was 
charitable. When any of his friends died, if 
there were no relations who could be depended 
upon for the necessary offices, he would say, * I 
will bury him.'" ^ 

Confucius was born in the year 551 B.C. in 
the principality of Lu in eastern China and was 
thus a contemporary of Gotama. He was the 

* Chinese Classics, ed. Legge, Vol. I, p. 89. 
Ill 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

son of Shu-Liang-Ho, an old but robust ex- 
ojSicer of the Chinese army who had contracted 
a childless marriage and to whom a concubine 
had borne a daughter.^ When about to marry 
again he sought the hand of one of the three 
daughters of the Yen family. The father of 
these young ladies summoned them and stated 
Shu's desire, adding that though old he was 
yet vigorous, healthy, of noble birth, and hold- 
ing a high position in the government. " Which 
of you shall I offer him.^^ " he asked. The two 
oldest remained silent, but the third said, 
"Father, it is for you to command and for us 
to obey." To which he replied, "Very well, 
then, you will do." And so this maiden of 
nineteen became the wife of the septuagenarian 
and their son was Confucius. That same 
filial piety which the youngest of Yen's daugh- 
ters exhibited toward her father, Confucius 



* Concubinage was tolerated out of respect for family perpetua- 
tion. To have a son to perpetuate his name and to perform the 
funeral offices at his death, this was the chief desideratum of every 
Chinese father. To be without male offspring justified concubinage, 
but it was regulated according to position, the emperor being allowed 
nine concubines, the ordinary citizen but one. 

112 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

manifested toward his mother, for whom he 
seems to have had an affection exceeding that 
for his own son and daughter. As a child 
Confucius showed a pronounced procHvity 
for serious study, for playing at festivals, at 
the postures of ceremony and the arrangement 
of sacrificial vessels, thus bearing out the fa- 
miliar Words worthian epigram, "The child is 
father to the man." At fifteen years of age 
he had already acquired an enviable reputation 
for his intellectual attainments. At nineteen 
he married and in his twentieth year he was 
appointed "Keeper of the Provincial stores." 
The following year he was promoted to the 
Agricultural Department of the government 
and made "Superintendent of farms and 
lands." How deeply conscious he was of the 
dignity of his office and the duty of faithfully 
fulfilling its requirements is attested by many 
a passage in the sacred books of Confucianism, 
showing him to have been a man of incorrup- 
tible honor and devoutly consecrated to his 
ideals. Holding somewhat unpopular views 
on questions of political ethics he fearlessly 
I 113 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

uttered them, censuring officials and parties 
regardless of results to himself. With a splen- 
did courage he acted as a public censor and 
paid the price of his office for his heroism. 
Forced to resign his position, he devoted him- 
self to travel, and for thirty years went from 
city to city, proclaiming those principles of 
political and moral reform which later were 
embodied in the "Four Books." When he 
had reached his fiftieth year a crisis occurred 
in the affairs of Lu and he was recalled, receiv- 
ing an appointment as "magistrate" of the 
province. This afforded him opportunity to 
test the practical worth of some of his teachings 
and the effect, we are told, bordered on the 
miraculous. Under his administration, the 
poor were properly cared for ; helpless, elderly 
people were treated with sympathy and wis- 
dom; crime diminished; war was discouraged 
and even the "Magna Charta" was antici- 
pated, for Confucius maintained that prison- 
ers had a right to trial by jury. So prosperous 
and peaceful was the principality of Lu under 
the Confucian regime that the princes of the 

114 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

neighboring provinces became jealous and 
contrived to undermine the success of their 
rival. Knowing the King's weakness for spec- 
tacular entertainment, they hired eighty cap- 
tivating dancing girls, bidding them present 
his majesty with twenty span of gorgeously 
caparisoned horses and forthwith entertain 
him with dance and song. So infatuated was 
the King of Lu with this entertainment that 
for three successive days he gave himself over 
to pleasure, ignoring all the duties of his oflSce 
and giving official audience to no one. This 
behavior so disgusted Confucius that he re- 
signed as magistrate, declining to serve under 
such a chief executive of state. Thus the 
ingenious scheme of the jealous princes had the 
desired effect. Having surrendered his office 
Confucius resolved to devote the remainder 
of his life to two ends : first, the gathering 
about him of a band of disciples to be trained 
in the principles of personal and social reform, 
and second, the editing of the sacred books of 
the Chinese religion. Both these aims he 
fulfilled and in the seventy-third year of his 

115 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

age he died, leaving a legacy of governmental 
principles, moral precepts and a personal 
example that have enriched and ennobled 
countless lives within and without the confines 
of China. I have it on the authority of 
Minister Wu that the influence of Confucius 
is on the increase, that his name is held in high- 
est veneration throughout the Chinese empire, 
not by Confucianists alone, but also by Tao- 
ists, Buddhists and representatives of the 
other religions, all of them protected by the 
government. It is said that the spirit of Con- 
fucius, like an atmosphere, pervades the thought 
and life of the four hundred million inhabit- 
ants of China. We may trace his influence 
in three distinct directions. It appears first, 
in his capacity as editor of the five '* Kings" 
or " Canons," which constitute the canonical 
scriptures of Confucianism. The word ''King" 
is of textile origin and signifies the warp- 
threads across which the woof are thrown in 
weaving the web. The five Kings are : — 

1. I-King, "Canon of Changes," the most 
ancient of the five, an occult interpretation of 

116 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

Nature and life by means of "trigrams" in 
sixty-four combinations to each of which a 
symbolical meaning is attached. 

2. Shu-King, "Canon of History," an his- 
torico-ethical work extolling the virtues of 
ancient model kings as contrasted with cer- 
tain despots. The narrative dates back to 
3000 B.C. but the early portions are so fraught 
with legendary embellishment as to lose all 
historical credibility. 

3. Shi-King, "Canon of Odes," a collection 
of three hundred and five odes, introducing 
us to the most ancient culture of China, many 
of these compositions having been sung by 
poets centuries before they were committed 
to writing, as the record itself testified. 

4. Li-Ki-King, "Canon of Rites," consist- 
ing of rules for the ceremonial to be observed 
by gentlemen in all the various relations of 
private life, a book that takes us into the very 
heart of Chinese society as it already was, 
centuries before Confucius. This book has 
its analogue in the "Chou-li" written at a 
much later day and dealing with the cere- 

117 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

monial for public life, as the "Li-Ki" with that 
for private life. "'As an educator of the na- 
tion," says Professor Hirth, " the 'Chou-li ' is 
unparalleled in the literature of the world." 

5. Ch'un-Ts'iu, "Spring and Autumn," an- 
nals (700-550 B.C.) of the province of Lu, and 
mainly the work of Confucius himself. The 
vicissitudes through which these "Kings" 
passed have been graphically described by a 
member of the "Han" dynasty, written about 
the time that Jesus was born. He relates 
how, after the death of Confucius, disputes 
arose as to the authenticity of the text, owing 
to the appearance of various editions; how in- 
cendiarism, actuated by the desire to keep the 
people in ignorance, destroyed the sacred 
literature of the nation; how, in the second 
century before our era, a successful attempt at 
remedying the unspeakable loss was made by 
an edict commanding all loyal Chinese to assist 
in the work of restoration, a commission having 
been appointed to superintend the work of 
collecting and editing all that could be recov- 
ered. And it is from the first century prior 

118 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

to our era that the Chinese "Classics," as we 
now have them, date. 

Great as was the influence of Confucius in 
his capacity as editor, it was still more marked 
in his capacity as teacher. This is made mani- 
fest in the "Four Books," the uncanonical 
scriptures of Confucianism. They may be 
regarded as the text-book of Confucianism, for 
though written after his death by disciples 
and devotees, they present the Master's 
thought throughout. They are : — 

1. Lun-Yu, "Discourses," or "Analects," 
presenting in twenty books the essential teach- 
ing of Confucius on the "national " virtue, filial 
piety as the foundation of family life and 
of that larger family life represented by 
the state with its government, to which obe- 
dience is required even as of children to their 
parents. 

2. Ta-Hio, "The Great Learning," a treatise 
on self -culture, grounded on the conception of 
knowledge as a means of promoting social re- 
form. 

3. Chung-Yung, "Doctrine of the Mean," 

119 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

the middle path between extremes, which the 
philosopher recommends. 

4. Mong-Tzi, "Mencius, the Philosopher," 
who Hved from 372 to 289 B.C. and was the 
stoutest champion of Confucian doctrines in 
his day. This book bears much resemblance 
to the "Lun-Yu" though more particularly 
concerned with "equilibrium" and "harmony" 
in government. For fuller information on 
these "Four Books" let me refer you to James 
Legge's noble edition of them, in both Chinese 
and English, under the title " Chinese Classics." 

But it was in his capacity as an exemplar that 
the influence of Confucius was most conspicu- 
ous and counted for most in the lives of his 
contemporaries. Like the philosopher and 
emperor, Marcus Aurelius, who tried to hold 
up the falling Roman empire by the power of 
personal example, himself illustrating in all 
humility self-control, self-reverence and self- 
realization, so Confucius cherishing a like 
belief in the efficacy of example, as the most 
powerful reforming agent, sought so to radiate 
a beneficent influence. He rightly held that 

120 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

of all reforming agencies there is none equal 
to the contagion of personaHty. Inspiration 
always counts for more than instruction when 
the problem is one of transfiguring common- 
place lives. The best thing any teacher can 
do, better than anything he can teach is to 
communicate moral earnestness and conse- 
cration. And were we to select from among his 
characteristics the one Confucius esteemed 
most highly of all, it would undoubtedly be 
his calm, persistent reliance on the power of 
example as superior to every other agency ca- 
pable of refining and elevating human life. 

To understand the rise of Confucius as a 
great moral leader, the cause and character of 
his leadership, we must go back in Chinese 
history to the reign of the famous "Chou" 
dynasty which lasted from 1124 to 249 B.C. 
During this period political, social and moral 
conditions obtained that provoked negative 
protest and demanded positive reforms. Early 
in the eighth century before our era there were 
signs of a decline of power in the central gov- 
ernment. Restless, self-seeking territorial lords 

121 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

plotted the invasion and usurpation of sover- 
eign authority. They soon made of China a 
battle-ground for the contending hosts of po- 
litical ambition and greed. For China was di- 
vided, much as was Germany, into small states, 
each of which had to subordinate its feudatory 
government to imperial authority. But pre- 
cisely as the historical map of Germany shows a 
shifting of territorial boundary lines during 
the Thirty Years' War and long after, so during 
the Chou dynasty, a similar but much aggra- 
vated situation was developed, reaching its 
most anarchic and demoralized condition about 
the middle of the sixth century. Nor was the 
general disorder confined to the political and 
social life of the people; it extended to their 
intellectual life. For, into the arena of con- 
tending powers swarmed philosophers of va- 
rious schools with their conflicting theories of 
the universe and of life, each seeking the pat- 
ronage and support of one or another of the 
territorial lords. Then it was that Confucius 
appeared as an independent teacher and re- 
former, setting forth the principles on which a 

122 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

strong, stable, peaceful, ethical, imperial gov- 
ernment must be reared, the conditions on 
which the right ordering of states depends and 
the moral rules that serve so to regulate indi- 
vidual life as to make it conducive to personal 
and national welfare. 

Examining the ancient religious records 
which he subsequently edited, he observed 
that under Yao and Shun, twenty centuries 
before his day, the nation was peaceful, pros- 
perous, happy. Semi-mythical paragons of 
perfection as these kings were, Confucius 
believed that their reign was the golden age of 
Chinese history and their exemplary lives the 
root cause of it. Consequently, to imitate their 
example and reproduce their doctrines of po- 
litical and social life was to Confucius the true 
solution of the problems which conditions 
under the Chou dynasty had raised. Thus, 
you observe, he disclaimed originality. He 
held that this was a power never to be claimed 
by any one under any circumstances, since Yao 
and Shun were the real and ultimate sources 
to which all truth and virtue must be traced. 

123 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

In them he saw the originators of what he 
merely passed on to later generations. His 
mission he felt was that of a humble trans- 
mitter of what he had found in the ancient 
scriptures of his people. "His brain was but 
a phonograph," as Professor Hirth has said, 
recording the wisdom of the first sages for the 
benefit of his contemporaries and posterity. 
And just as this traditionalism made Confu- 
cius, so in turn did Confucius make China. 
No sooner had he incorporated in himself the 
race to which he belonged than it felt the reac- 
tion of his mighty personality, eighty million 
souls, or more, turning to him as he had turned 
to Yao and Shun. As indicative alike of his 
intellectual humility and his sense of gratitude 
to these illustrious teachers of antiquity I 
select the following quotations from the "Four 
Books": — 

"In the way of the superior man there are 
four things, to not one of which have I as yet 
attained. — To serve my father, as I would 
require my son to serve me: to this I have not 
attained; to serve my prince, as I would re- 

124 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

quire my minister to serve me : to this I have 
not attained ; to serve my elder brother, as I 
would require my younger brother to serve me : 
to this I have not attained ; to set the example 
in behaving to a friend, as I would require 
him to behave to me : to this I have not at- 
tained." 

"The Master said: The sage and the man of 
perfect virtue ; — how dare I rank myself 
with them ? It may simply be said of me, 
that I strive to become such without satiety, 
and teach others without weariness." 

" The Master said: A transmitter and not a 
maker, believing in and loving the ancients, I 
venture to compare myself with our old P'ang."* 

In the preceding lecture we asked, what is 
the chief end of man ? We compared the an- 
swer given in the Catechism, with what Go- 
tama and Zoroaster would have said. But the 
answer Confucius would have given has noth- 
ing in common with any of these. "To glorify 
God and enjoy him forever" would have been 
an end altogether too remote, metaphysical and 

^ Legge, Chinese Classics, Vol. I, pp. 394, 206, 427, 195. 
125 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

mystical to satisfy him. To stop the process of 
reincarnation, whether by the Hindu or by the 
Buddhistic method, was an end wholly foreign 
to the order of ideas on which Confucius had 
been brought up. Zoroaster's answer, — to 
cooperate with Ahura-Mazda the primeval 
good principle in the struggle for victory over 
Angro-Mainyus, the source and sustainer of 
all evil — this, too, was an end altogether 
alien to the reflections of Confucius. Having 
for his prime and ever present concern the 
perfecting of the relations that exist between 
man and man, his answer would have been ex- 
pressed in terms of that all-absorbing problem. 
To him the chief end of man was to become a 
desirable member of society and the main func- 
tion of Confucius as a great moral leader lay in 
pointing the way to the attainment of this end. 
He directed attention to the word "recipro- 
city" as that "on which the whole of life may 
proceed," adding, "what you do not wish done 
to yourself do not unto others." He advocated 
for each individual, whatever his calling or his 
position in society, the practice of "the five 

126 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

cardinal virtues": justice, temperance, gen- 
erosity, humility, propriety (a sense of the 
fitness of things). He divided the possible 
relations of man into five groups, attaching to 
each specific duties and defined "the superior 
man" as one who recognized these relations 
and fulfilled the duties of such of the five as 
came into the realm of his experience. Sover- 
eign and subject, husband and wife, parent 
and child, older and younger brothers and sis- 
ters, friend and friend. As typing the duties 
identified with each of these five relations he 
bade sovereigns be benevolent and subjects 
loyal, husbands devoted and wives affection- 
ate, parents wise and children obedient, older 
brothers and sisters considerate of younger 
and the younger deferential toward the older, 
friend faithful to friend. 

Given the fulfilment of these various duties, 
scrupulous observance of all the rules which 
Confucius prepared for the different depart- 
ments of life, and there would ensue of neces- 
sity, he believed, that regulation of the indi- 
vidual, the family and the state which guaran- 

127 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

tees to the whole nation " the three greatest 
blessings, — material prosperity, learning and 
virtue." Yea, there would be seen again in 
society, what glorified the kingdoms of Yao 
and Shun, — a reproduction in human life of 
the serene, harmonious order visible in the solar 
system and in the regular operations of Na- 
ture. Only through these, Confucius held, 
does "Heaven" speak. That order in Nature 
provides man with a pattern of moral conduct. 
Man, he believed, has no higher lesson to learn 
than that taught him by Nature, viz. to repro- 
duce in his own personal life and in society 
an order as calm and unbroken and harmoni- 
ous as is hers. Just here let me quote the fol- 
lowing passages from the *' Analects" and the 
"Great Learning" in confirmation of what has 
been said touching the chief end of man: — 

"Ever think of your ancestors, cultivate 
virtue, strive to accord your dispositions to 
Nature ; so shall you be seeking great happi- 
ness. 

"Does Heaven speak? The four seasons 
pursue their courses and all things are con- 

128 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

tinually being produced in order. Equilibrium 
is the root from which harmony springs. Har- 
mony is the universal path which all creatures 
should pursue. Let the states of harmony and 
equilibrium exist in perfection and a happy 
order will prevail and all things flourish. 

"The ancients who wished to illustrate 
virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered 
well their own States. Wishing to order well 
their States, they regulated their families. 
Wishing to regulate their families, they first 
cultivated their persons. Wishing to culti- 
vate their persons, they first rectified their 
hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they 
first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. 
Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they 
first extended to the utmost their knowledge. 
Such extension of knowledge lay in the inves- 
tigation of things. Things being investi- 
gated, knowledge became complete. Their 
knowledge being complete, their thoughts 
were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, 
their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts 
being rectified, their persons were cultivated. 

K 129 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

Their persons being cultivated, their families 
were regulated. Their families being regu- 
lated, their States were rightly governed. 
Their States being rightly governed, the whole 
kingdom was made tranquil and happy." ^ 

Concerning belief in God, Confucius was 
exceedingly reserved. He "preferred not to 
speak," and his reserve was due, in part, to the 
influence of the ancient Chinese religion which, 
like the government, was patriarchal, only 
the Emperor worshipping ** Heaven," while 
the common people worshipped only their 
ancestors. Partly, also, this reserve was due 
to an innate agnostic tendency of Confucius' 
own mind. We read that "among the sub- 
jects on which the Master did not speak were 
spiritual beings and miraculous things." Un- 
like Gotama, who was an atheist in the sense 
that he "left vacant the place above the finite 
gods," — denying the existence of a supreme 
permanent Reality (Brahma), believing all 
things and beings to exist only in a state of 
flux, — Confucius recognized a Power higher 

* Legge, Chinese Classics, p. 357. 
130 




CONFUCIUS. 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

than man, related to man. But knowing 
nothing of that Power he preferred to be silent 
on the subject. Plenty of passages there are 
in his own "Ch'un-ts'iu-King" and in the 
"Four Books" to prove him a deeply religious 
man, conscious of dependence on an inscru- 
table Power. But being inscrutable, Confucius 
invariably used the cosmic term "Tien" 
(Heaven) in preference to the anthropomor- 
phic term "Shang-ti" (Highest Lord). It is 
related that when imprisoned in the city of 
Ku'ang with a group of disciples and it seemed 
to them that release would be indefinitely 
postponed, Confucius reminded them that 
"Heaven protects the culture" which he and 
they represent. "What harm can come to 
those protected by Heaven .f^" On another 
occasion, when threatened with assassination 
and his disciples urged him to flee, the Master 
said, "Heaven has endowed me with virtues, 
what have I to fear from oppressors .^^ " On 
another occasion he said, "Alas ! there is no 
one that knows me." Tsze-Kung said, " What 
do you mean by thus saying that no one knows 

131 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

you ? " He replied, " I do not murmur against 
Heaven. I do not grumble against men. My 
studies lie low, and my penetration rises high. 
But there is Heaven, — that knows me !" ^ 

It is worthy of note that the attitude of 
Confucius toward theism saved millions of 
Chinese from the degrading superstitions and 
magic that mark Taoism and Chinese Bud- 
dhism.^ 

In conformity with his conception of 
"Heaven" Confucius held that petitional 
prayer is ineflBcacious and therefore not to be 
practised. "My prayers," he said, "were 
offered up long ago," meaning that he con- 
sidered prayers to consist in living a good life 
and obeying the dictates of conscience. "He 
who sins against Heaven has no place to pray," 
he continues, meaning that even spirits have 
no power to bestow blessings on those who have 
sinned against the decrees of Heaven. The use 
of flowers and the offering of food to "spirits" 

1 Oj>. dt, pp. 98-99. 

2 Buddhism was introduced into China about 65 a.d. and since 
then has undergone almost total transformation there. 

132 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

that were thus worshipped, Confucius regarded 
as desirable only for '' spiritual purification," 
tending to make one more susceptible to in- 
fluences from the realm of spirits. For Con- 
fucius accepted the ancient Chinese belief in a 
hierarchy of Nature-spirits corresponding to 
the political organization of the country. Just 
as the various officials of the empire stand 
under the emperor, so under the heaven-spirit, 
highest lord, "Shang-ti," there exist the spirits 
of the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers, the 
forests, etc., together with the ancestral spirits 
of families, ranked according to the social 
status of the people. There being such a 
hierarchy of spirits, it follows that all persons 
cannot be permitted to worship these spirits 
indiscriminately. Only the emperor can wor- 
ship Heaven. Only governors of provinces 
can worship the spirits of mountains and rivers. 
Only magistrates and officials below the gov- 
ernor can worship the minor orders of spirits. 
The common people caii worship only the 
spirits of their ancestors and are required to 
do so. Hence in every Confucian home there 

133 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

is a "hall of the ancestors" where tablets are 
placed bearing the names of the ancestors, 
father and mother conducting the ceremony. 
This consists of praises to the spirits of the 
ancestors and the offering of flowers, followed 
by a family meal to which the spirits are in- 
vited and at which they are represented by 
one of the boys of the family, dressed in his dead 
grandfather's clothes, to symbolize the pres- 
ence of the ancestral spirits. The emperor, 
no less than the common people, is required 
to worship the spirits of his ancestors and the 
supreme semi-annual festival is that in honor 
of the royal ancestors, conducted by the em- 
peror himself, assisted by the chief dignitaries 
of the realm. At the common meal one of 
the imperial grandsons, duly robed in an an- 
cestral royal gown, represents the spirits of 
ancestral royalty. 

To this ''spring and autumn festival" must 
be added the annual ceremony in commemo- 
ration of Confucius, celebrated in the red-walled 
temple of Confucius at Pekin and conducted by 
the emperor. Before the tablet of the Master he 

134 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

utters the following invocation : " Great art 
thou, O perfect Sage. Thy virtue is full, thy 
doctrine complete. Among mortal men there 
has not been thy equal. All Kings honor thee. 
Thou art our pattern. Reverently have the 
sacrificial vessels been set out. Full of awe we 
sound our drums and bells." Two character- 
istics of these ceremonies are to be particularly 
noted. First, there is nothing propitiative 
or intercessory in them, as compared with 
Christian prayers and offerings ; they are 
purely commemorative, springing from a grate- 
ful recognition of indebtedness to the past. 
Second, they are thoroughly typical of the 
practical, ethical, non-theological nature of 
Confucianism ; a state-religion of the most 
pronounced and thoroughgoing type, em- 
ploying civic officials where other religions 
hire priests and acknowledging in these officials 
no supernatural power or meditorial functions, 
but solely that of conducting the commemora- 
tive exercises; a religion without theology, 
church or priesthood ; a religion so identified 
with the national government as on the one 

135 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

hand to have given it its unrivalled, unsurpassed 
persistence through five thousand years, and 
on the other hand to have denied it that sense 
of infinite relations and infinite possibilities 
without which no religion can ever permanently 
satisfy. Just as Venice paid for the stability 
of her oligarchy the terrible price of unproduc- 
tiveness in original literature, art, philosophy 
and poetry of the first rank, so China paid the 
price of spiritual sterility for her unification of 
religion and the political state. 

With reference to belief in a future life 
Confucius again took an agnostic position, 
one altogether consistent with his attitude to 
theism and the intense practicality of his 
dominant ethical interests, concerned, as they 
were, solely with terrestrial reform. Like 
Horace Greeley, whom Minister Wu quoted 
in his Carnegie Hall address, Confucius felt 
that "they who discharge the duties of this 
life will find they have no time to peer into 
life beyond the grave ; better, therefore, attend 
to each life in its proper order." All specula- 
tion on the hereafter was to him profitless and 

136 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

futile. He behaved toward questions on man's 
state after death very much as did Gotama 
and Jesus, pointing to the path of righteous- 
ness here and now, reminding them that this 
is man's first concern and that in consecrated 
devotion thereto he can safely trust the future 
to be generous and just. A characteristic 
passage from his sayings is the following : 
" Chi-Lu asked about serving the spirits of the 
dead, and the Master said, 'While you are 
not able to serve men, how can you serve their 
spirits.'^' The disciple added, 'I venture to 
ask about death,' and he was answered, 
* While you do not know life, how can you 
know about death .? ' " Still more striking is a 
conversation with another disciple, recorded 
in the "Narratives of the School." "Tsze- 
Kung asked him, saying, 'Do the dead have 
knowledge (of our services, that is), or are 
they without knowledge ? ' The Master re- 
plied, ' If I were to say that the dead have such 
knowledge, I am afraid that filial sons and 
dutiful grandsons would injure their substance 
in paying the last offices to the departed; 

137 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

and if I were to say that the dead have not 
such knowledge, I am afraid lest unfilial sons 
should leave their parents unburied. You 
need not wish, Tsze, to know whether the 
dead have knowledge or not. There is no 
present urgency about the point. Hereafter 
you will know it for yourself.' " ^ 

But being a practical people, it is not unusual 
to find Confucianists, when confronted with 
business or domestic misfortune, or with 
death, employing Taoist or Buddhist priests 
to bring their magical auguries to bear on the 
crisis, or to chant their requiems for the de- 
parted, as the case may be. In other words, 
not being certain of what comes after death, 
and their own religion providing no ceremonial 
related to the soul's future welfare, they find 
it practicable and desirable to resort to reli- 
gions that make a specialty of securing eternal 
bliss in the world to come. Commendable as 
such eclecticism may be, it none the less betrays 
a fatal defect in the Master's religion and the 
probability of a neo-Confucianism rising in 

^Op. dt., pp. 95. 99, 
138 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

China, equal to meeting a spiritual need which 
no one of the three ruling religions of China 
supplies to the satisfaction of the best ele- 
ments of the nation. 

If Gotama's system may be described as a 
religion of the heart, because of his emphasis 
on self -renouncing love; if the system of 
Zoroaster may be designated a religion of the 
hand, because of the stress laid upon purifying, 
saving work ; then that of Confucius may be 
called a religion of the head, because intellec- 
tual mastery of his principles and rules of 
morality was the surest guarantee of an ideal 
social order. He iSrmly believed that if people 
would but reverently memorize and master 
these precepts, the intellectual task would so 
react on the will as to produce the moral life. 
People, he used to say, are just like water 
which takes exactly the shape of the dish into 
which it is poured. Such a dish he saw in his 
system of rules and if only the people could be, 
as it were, poured into the dish, the desired 
moral result would ensue. But alas, between 
knowing what is right and doing it, there lies 

139 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

love of the right and the will to do it. And 
until the affections and will are reckoned with 
and duly trained, the Confucian plan must 
remain but partially complete. So far did he 
go in his reliance on rules as to advocate the 
assuming of certain physical postures expres- 
sive of moral qualities, — such as humility, 
reverence, obedience, — believing that the very 
soul of the individual would become informed 
with these graces of character of which the 
postures were the external signs. Whatever 
degree of value is to be attached to such in- 
tellectual and physical self-discipline as Con- 
fucius enjoined, it will be conceded that this 
faith of his in the efficacy of rules and attitudes 
to achieve the desired moral end, this method 
of working from the circumference to the cen- 
tre, coupled with the influence of ancestor- 
worship, explains in large measure that age- 
long arrested development of China to which 
she has recently awakened and from which she 
is steadily freeing herself. 

In bold and striking contrast to Confucius 
stood his older contemporary, the philosopher 

140 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

and state historian, Lao-Tze. He was fifty 
years old when Confucius was born. The story 
is told that when the latter visited the state 
capitol to consult the archives of which Lao- 
Tze was the custodian, the venerable sage took 
occasion to inform him that his ideas were 
erroneous and his reform-method futile, add- 
ing that it would be well to discard his arti- 
ficial dignity and ceremonial manner, because 
when a man has real modesty and humility 
he does not seek to give them external expres- 
sion. In this rebuff Lao-Tze struck the real 
defect, the vulnerable spot in the Confucian 
system. On its positive side, the thought of 
Lao-Tze was that man should aim to possess 
that inward deep morality of the spirit which 
makes him indifferent to rules and spontane- 
ously intuitively guides him to what is right. 
Just as Jesus, in his discussion with the tricky 
lawyer, took the ground that he who has the 
spirit of love to God and love to man in his 
heart has that out of which all good actions 
will spontaneously flow, so Lao-Tze held that 
there is in every man the "Tao," that divine 

141 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

spirit which has its counterpart in the external 
world as the basis of Nature's order and har- 
mony, and in devotion to which "the incom- 
plete achieves completion, and the ideal of 
perfection, realization." Thus there exists 
''the eternal Tao," bodiless, omnipresent, 
prior even to God, as conditioning the total 
universe; the "ur-grund" of all that is. Be- 
ing omnipresent, it is immanent in man as his 
reasoning, virtue-acting power, operating to 
will and to do the transcendent divine will of 
the Tao. Let man yield himself to its holy 
prompting and "act non-assertion"; let him 
never interfere with Nature's way or seek to 
alter the nature of things, but rather practise 
self -surrender to the Tao, and he will find that 
"in quietness and confidence shall be his 
strength." 

Like Confucius, Lao-Tze believed that man's 
chief end is to reproduce in all the personal and 
social relations of life the moral prototype 
furnished by Nature's order and harmony, but 
he differed from Confucius as to the means 
whereby this end should be reached. Not by 

142 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

setting up a system of rules and regulations 
and adjusting souls to them, but rather by- 
developing inner poise, purity, passivity, i.e. 
self-subordination to the promptings of "Tao," 
which makes the soul superior to rules, did 
Lao-Tze propose to achieve the desired end. 
Such was the ethical mysticism of the vener- 
able philosopher, as I gather it from the one 
only book he wrote, — the *'Tao-te-King," 
or, "Classic of Reason and Virtue." 

Lao-Tze was an ascetic, a recluse ; he went 
into voluntary exile, disgusted with the po- 
litical and social disorder of his time. Con- 
fucius was a man of the world, yet without 
worldliness, through personal example influ- 
encing his fellow-men for good. 

Lao-Tze was an unshorn, tattered, half- 
starved hermit ; the occupant of a hollow rock 
or cave in the wilderness. Confucius was a 
sleek, well-fed, comfortable philosopher and 
statesman ; enjoying the favor of princes and 
kings. 

Lao-Tze sought to reform each human soul 
at the roots of his being, to purify the heart, 

143 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

the inner springs of conduct, believing that all 
external relations would right themselves as a 
result. Confucius began at the other end, 
with etiquette, propriety, good manners, moral 
rules, believing that the heart would thereby 
be reformed. Lao-Tze determined man's life 
from within ; Confucius, from without. The 
former was subjective, the latter objective in 
attitude and method. The one operated from 
the centre to the circumference, the other from 
the circumference to the centre. Lap-Tze 
was an anarchist in the philosophical sense, 
opposed to governing and in favor of sponta- 
neity and independence in thought and con- 
duct. Confucius was a monarchist, wishing 
to have government penetrate to the very 
heart of the individual, the family and the 
state. 

Lao-Tze cared for wisdom, not scholarship. 
Confucius cared for scholarship and hoped to 
get wisdom through learning. 

Lao-Tze's system called for much patient 
and hard thinking, for analysis of the con- 
densed ethical truths of the "Tao-te-King," 

144 



CONFUCIUS AND LAO-TZE 

offered, as they were, without commentary or 
explanation and interspersed with metaphysical 
argument. The code of Confucius called for 
no such mental and physical strain. It was 
concrete, intelligible, practical; free from 
speculative elements, serviceable as a text- 
book of instruction for public schools and ac- 
tually was made the basis of all civil service 
examinations, the sole gateway to office. No 
wonder, then, that in view of these differences, 
Confucius as a moral leader eclipsed Lao-Tze, 
though much of the latter's message is of tran- 
scendent worth and singularly suited to our 
owTi age with its passion for external results 
that are tangible, its devotion to ameliorating 
social and economic conditions as contrasted 
with the more radical devotion to that which is 
inpalpable and imperishable, the infinite and 
eternal worth in man. Yet, after all, the 
supreme reliance of Confucius, as we have seen, 
was not on rules alone, nor on rules plus biog- 
raphies, but on personal beneficent example. 
This he held superior to every other known re- 
formatory agent. Such having been his con- 

L 145 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

viction, it should be noted further that the 
hfting power of his example was due, not so 
much to his exalted character and great learn- 
ing, as to his striving for an ideal of virtue 
and of scholarship which he felt he had not yet 
attained. Others, seeing that striving, were 
moved to a like endeavor. So is it ever with 
the truly great teacher. Not his intellectual 
or moral attainments, but his spiritual pas- 
sion to possess more of infinite truth and right, 
this it is that determines his lifting power over 
other lives. So was it with Confucius. His 
greatest work of art was not his edition of 
the "Kings" nor the composition of the 
"Spring and Autumn Annals"; it was the 
life in which he practised the precepts taught 
in the books. 



146 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL AND THE 
COMMONWEALTH OF MAN 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL AND THE 
COMMONWEALTH OF MAN 

TN the second lecture of this course we saw 
the part played by the "Rishis" in 
India, forty centuries ago; those poet-priests 
who in exquisitely modulated verse inter- 
preted the world in terms of spirit, seeing in 
Nature the manifestation of countless intelli- 
gent powers or spirits. Still to-day do those 
"Vedic" bards make their appeal. Despite 
their polytheism, long since outgrown, they 
call us away from the crude materialism which 
in its crass conceit imagines it has dispelled 
the mystery from matter and explained crea- 
tion in terms of "Kraft und StofiP." 

And when the successors of those poet- 
priests departed from the simplicity and purity 
of the ancient Vedic faith, becoming engrossed 
in ceremonialism and priestcraft, in anti- 
democratic caste exclusiveness and debilitat- 

149 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

ing asceticism, then it was that Gotama, the 
Buddha, appeared. He called a halt at this 
religious externalism and inaugurated a mighty 
ethical reaction, mapping out a systematic 
course in self -discipline, many of the features of 
which are as useful for us to-day as they were 
for the Indians of fifteen centuries ago. 

In the third lecture we saw how Zoroaster 
inspired the oppressed peasants of Bactria to 
drain the marshes, irrigate the dry lands, 
destroy noxious insects, maintain personal 
purity in thought, word and deed, because, 
said he, through such physical and moral work 
the power of the arch demon, Ahriman, the 
source of all evil, will be destroyed and the 
victory of the supreme and everlasting good 
God Ormuzd, be guaranteed. Here, too, we 
found a gospel not without its elements of 
practical value for our own developing civili- 
zation. 

The fourth lecture was devoted to Confucius, 
statesman, moralist, exemplar, exponent of the 
gospel that man's supreme purpose should be to 
reproduce in all the various relations of public 

150 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

and private life the beautiful, calm, unbroken 
order of Nature. 

We come now to a group of great moral 
leaders identified, not with the Aryan, or the 
Turanian, but with the Semitic branch of the 
human family ; the prophets of Israel. They 
are the noblest ancient representatives of a 
people whose story extends over thirty-five 
centuries and is, without exception, the most 
remarkable in the history of the nations ; a 
people, homeless, suspected, persecuted ; wan- 
derers over the face of the earth, seeking a per- 
manent home and finding none ; a people 
subjected throughout the Christian centuries 
to gross indignities from the people of Jesus 
and Paul, both of whom were Jews; a people 
victimized by prejudice so deep and inhuman 
that even little children of refined Jewish 
parents have come home from school crying 
because of the abuse heaped on them by the 
children of parents whose finest religious in- 
heritances are from Moses and his successors ; 
a people whose religious patriotism has been so 
intensified by persecution that even themost 

151 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

liberal among them insist on remaining Jews 
so long as Christians make it a reproach to be a 
Jew; a people who founded the first univer- 
sities of continental Europe and who, in an 
age of superstition, when faith was blind and 
ignorance a passport to Paradise, fostered edu- 
cation, advanced the arts and sciences and who 
count among the contributors to our civiliza- 
tion, Astruc and Ibn Ezra, Maimonides and 
Moses Mendelssohn, Spinoza, Heine, Auer- 
bach and the Montefiores ; a people number- 
ing to-day eleven millions in all; and of the 
one million or more, here in Greater New 
York, it must be said that, as a class, they are 
the most self-respecting, self-reliant, self-sup- 
porting, law-abiding portion of our mixed 
population. 

Just whence the ancestors of this people 
came is still one of the vexed problems of eth- 
nology. Yet we do know that in historical 
times they occupied the Tigris-Euphrates 
Valley, and that after a brief sojourn on the 
borders of Egypt they marched northward to 
Canaan where they settled down to agricul- 

152 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

tural life and organized that religion which, 
like those of India, Persia and China, under- 
went development ; its evolution ranging from 
the crude polytheism and uncivilized morality 
of patriarchal times to the pure monotheism 
and ethics of the post-exilian prophets. 

First among the great Hebrew leaders whose 
names have come down to us is Abraham. In 
the patriarchal age he overshadows all other 
personalities. Unfortunately the facts of his 
life and work are so enmeshed in legendary 
material as to forbid our forming any trust- 
worthy opinions concerning his achievements. 
Indeed, there are those who deny the historicity 
of Abraham altogether, believing the name to 
be that of a tribe rather than of an individual. 
He is represented in the Old Testament as the 
first Jew to leave the ancestral home, to go from 
"Ur of the Chaldees" westward and lay the 
foundations of a new nation. He is also rep- 
resented as making a covenant or contract 
with " Yahweh" according to which He will be 
their God and further their interests as His 
chosen people, provided they acknowledge 

153 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

him as their God and fulfil his command- 
ments. 

But the most commanding figure among all 
the early Palestinian teachers and leaders is 
Moses, the father of Hebrew liberty and legis- 
lation. It would carry us too far afield were 
we to review the story of his life and work, 
engaging and instructive though it is. After 
his death, the separate tribes which had formed 
a loose confederation found that only in solid 
union is there strength. Accordingly, about 
the year 1060 B.C. a Hebrew monarchy was 
organized with Saul as the first king. For 
nearly a century prosperity and peace were so 
in the ascendant that later generations looked 
back upon this period as the golden age of 
Hebrew history. But when Solomon's son, 
Rehoboam, refused to reduce the taxes that 
had been levied for the building of the temple 
and when twice in succession the candidate 
for the throne was chosen from among the 
southern tribes, the northern group rebelled. 
The result was a division of the United King- 
dom into " Israel " and '' Judah," a northern and 

154 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

a southern kingdom, the former dating from 960 
to 722 B.C. and the latter outliving the north- 
ern kingdom by a century and a half, to 585 B.C. 
Both kingdoms, during the first hundred 
years of their existence, developed a strong 
and many-sided civilization, yet not without 
its dark and dangerous features. For the 
record tells us that along with developing 
prosperity there was a slackening of devotion 
to Yahweh and his commandments, that with 
the increase of culture came the curse of lux- 
ury, that acquaintance with the licentious 
practices of the Canaanitish religion corrupted 
public and private morals, that when all the 
people aided in the tilling of the soil, there was 
no poverty to be abolished, whereas the growth 
of the commercial spirit and the tendency of 
land to fall into the hands of a few were pro- 
ductive of disastrous consequences. Credi- 
tors snatched children from their parents to 
extort the money they could not otherwise 
obtain (2 Kings iv. 1). Hunger compelled 
some who were in poverty to put themselves 
voluntarily under bondage for bread (1 Sam. 

155 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

li. 5). The law tried to ameliorate the lot of 
such slaves by limiting their servitude to six 
years, but it was not always observed (Jer. 
xxxiv). David and some of his successors 
seized lands from their subjects and gave the 
property to favorite nobles (1 Sam. viii. 14). 
The story of Naboth (1 Kings xxi) illustrates 
one of the many acts of injustice of those days 
and the rapaciousness of the rich who *' added 
field to field," dispossessing the small land- 
holders and confiscating the common lands. 
The record tells of merchants reclining on 
ivory couches eating young calves and drink- 
ing costly wines from golden bowls to the 
music of the timbrel and the viol, revelling 
in luxuries while they squeezed high prices 
from their customers and "sold the poor into 
slavery for their debt on a pair of shoes" 
(Amos ii. 6; vi. 6). Nay more, the record 
tells also of a war-cloud, at first no bigger than 
a man's hand, spreading westward from As- 
syria till it hung over this brilliant, prosperous, 
luxurious, cultured Hebrew civilization of the 
eighth century. 

166 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

Then it was that there appeared in both the 
northern and the southern kingdom a suc- 
cession of great moral leaders known as proph- 
ets. They were not soothsayers, diviners, 
seers, clairvoyants, trance speakers. Rather 
were they the successors of this class in Israel. 
Not fore-tellers but forth-tellers they were, 
predicting, not on the basis of any occult prac- 
tices, but solely on the basis of study of the 
economic, political, social, moral and religious 
conditions of their time. Statesmen they were, 
of the highest type, recalling the sacred con- 
tract that had been made between Israel and 
Yahweh, the terms of which had been grossly 
violated by the people for whose benefit the 
covenant had been made. They had allowed 
themselves to think that just because such a 
covenant had been made Yahweh was insepa- 
rably bound up with the national welfare, for- 
getting all the while that their God is a right- 
eous God, "the Holy One," and that, as such, 
he demands righteousness as the sine qua non 
of Divine protection and bounty. Hence the 
immediate function of the prophets was to 

157 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

draw attention to this neglected aspect of the 
covenant and to interpret the varying vicissi- 
tudes of the nation in the hght of it. When 
prosperity came, it meant a fulfilment of Yah- 
weh's promise; when adversity crossed their 
path, it was the sign of failure on the part of the 
chosen people to fulfil their part of the contract, 
a chastising that meant also a preparation for 
future blessings. And the greater the mis- 
fortunes of the nation, the more fixed and in- 
tense became the faith of the prophets that 
Yahweh would not forsake his people, but 
through the discipline of suffering and sorrow 
bring them back to himself and his command- 
ments and so fit them for a glorious future. 
In opposition to the traditional practice of 
fleeing to the altar and doubling the sacrifices 
in time of danger or disaster, the prophets 
preached the utter futility and folly of such 
externalism. They held steadfastly to their 
conviction that at such times the sole source 
of safety lies in the practice of ethical religion, 
and warned the people again and again that 
the precursors of national death are injustice, 

158 



I 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

greed, pride and wantonness. These prophets 
did not wait to be hired to preach and they 
could not be bought to keep still. Again and 
again did they embarrass kings, and constantly 
were their relations with the masses strained. 
Instead of chiming in with the jingoism of their 
day, they cried, "Wash you, make you clean, 
put away the evil of your doings from before 
mine eyes, saith the Lord." No other nation 
ever produced an order of prophets. The 
finest flower of Athenian thought was devoted 
to philosophy, literature and art. The genius 
of ancient Rome spent itself in the develop- 
ment of law. But the noblest representatives 
of Israel were consecrated to the interests of 
an ethical religion. 

- Just how far Elijah and Elisha represented 
the typical Hebrew prophet it is difficult to 
say because the story of their work has come 
down to us in an idealized form, largely over- 
laid with legendary lore. Deeply conscious 
as they were of the sinfulness of idolatry, and 
successful as they were in uprooting and anni- 
hilating the Tyrian Baal-worship, by means 

159 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

of the overthrow of the Omri dynasty, of 
which Ahab was the head, nevertheless they 
seem to have had no consciousness of national 
moral guilt or of its relation to national mis- 
fortune. Haying condemned and extirpated 
idolatry, they seem to have thought that they 
had no further mission to fulfil. At least 
they devote themselves only to optimistic 
preaching of Yahweh's favor and power, ad- 
vising continuous trust in His goodness and 
might. The distinctive characteristic of the 
typical prophet, viz. his belief that national 
misfortune is always superinduced by national 
unrighteousness, that a nation morally repre- 
hensible is unworthy to be blessed, this, it 
would seem, was wanting in the message of 
the prophets prior to Amos, i,e, from Samuel 
to Micajah. True, Elijah announced ''the 
judgment of Yahweh" and Micajah gave a 
magnificent exhibition of a prophet declining 
to promise Yahweh's favor except to those 
who did what was right. But these examples 
at best are only the exceptions that prove 
the rule. When, however, the nation came 

160 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

into closer relations with her foreign neigh- 
bors, notably Assyria and Egypt, when danger 
threatened from these quarters, when increas- 
ing prosperity brought demoralizing luxury in 
its train, when the future of the nation began 
to grow dark and doubtful, seeing that the 
all-powerful Yahweh allowed the enemies of 
Israel to harass her, then it was that the 
supreme type of the prophetic order appeared. 
Prophets, they were, who interpreted Hebrew 
history in terms of moral conduct, who ex- 
plained the nation's tribulation as due to vio- 
lation of the moral commandments of *'the 
righteous One," who recognized Yahweh, not 
only as "the Mighty One," but also as "the 
Holy One," and therefore requiring that His 
people be holy if they would prosper. 

First, in chronological order, of this highest 
type of Hebrew prophets and first of the so- 
called writing prophets — those who com- 
mitted their utterances to writing — was 
Amos. We have no books from Samuel, 
Nathan, Abijah, Elijah, Elisha, Micajah. 
The reason is that writing for other than 

H 161 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

commercial, or industrial, or legal purposes 
had not yet come into vogue. Moreover, the 
predictions of these prophets were, for the 
most part, brief, disconnected utterances, 
related only to passing occurrences. But by 
the year 800 B.C. writing for literary purposes 
had begun and though Amos may have dic- 
tated his discourses, they were written in the 
first quarter of the eighth century before our 
era. According to the superscription of his 
book Amos was a cattle owner and rancher, 
but moved by the divine call of the higher 
patriotism to quit his ranch, he went to town 
as the spokesman of Yahweh, as the con- 
secrated reformer of a demoralized com- 
munity (Amos vii. 14, 15). He breaks in 
upon a religious meeting at Bethel and 
frankly tells the people that Yahweh cares 
nothing for their services, that he hates their 
Sabbath observance when on week days they 
practise injustice and inhumanity. Time was 
when "the day of Yahweh" meant the day 
of Israel's triumph over her enemies. To 
Amos, however, it meant the day when Yahweh 

162 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

vvould chastise Israel by means of a foreign 
foe because His people are corrupt, because 
greed and oppression rule the land (ii, v). 
Surveying the political, economic and moral 
conditions, he predicts captivity and other 
calamity for Israel (vi-ix). Yet he is not 
utterly without hope. At the close of his 
withering arraignment of the nation he allows 
himself to say that Judah shall be established 
in prosperity as in the days of old and Israel 
be restored to its land and dwell there for- 
ever (ix. 11-15). And this utterance is the 
germ of that Messianic hope which was 
steadily developed in the course of the follow- 
ing seven centuries. Contemporary with 
Amos, though fifteen years his junior in the 
field of prophecy, was Hosea. Both addressed 
themselves chiefly to the northern kingdom. 
But whereas Amos was stern, relentless, 
fiery in his appeal for national reformation, 
Hosea was tender, compassionate, gentle; 
not arguing but pleading with his people, 
passionately beseeching them to mend their 
ways. Hosea had been deceived by his wife, 

163 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

and he uses her infidelity as a simile to rebuke 
Israel's infidelity to Yahweh. In terms of 
the conjugal relation Hosea pleads, nor is he 
wholly without hope of Israel's redemption. 
For even as in his own home a reconciliation 
had been brought about with his wife, so 
might this prefigure the reconciliation that 
shall come to Israel, forestalling divorce from 
Yahweh. Hosea saw, as did Amos, the in- 
evitable invasion of the Assyrians and pre- 
dicted their taking Israel into captivity (ix. 
3). Like Amos, too, his final word is one of 
love and hope, picturing Yahweh as healing 
the nation's backsliding, turning his anger 
away, becoming "as dew unto Israel," who 
shall thereupon "blossom as a lily and cast 
forth his roots as Lebanon" (xiv. 4-5). 

In the year 722 B.C. the prediction of Amos 
and Hosea was fulfilled. The Assyrian King, 
Sargon, successor of Shalmanezer, captured 
Samaria, the capital of the northern king- 
dom, taking away the great majority of the 
citizens to settle in Samaria and the sur- 
rounding country (2 Kings xvii. 24). Thus 

164 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

Israel became a dependency of Assyria, the 
first in a succession of foreign subjugations 
which, while depriving the Hebrews of national 
independence, proved favorable to their re- 
ligious growth and this, in turn, provoked 
their tireless resistance of foreign oppression. 

In the southern kingdom, contempora- 
neous with Amos and Hosea, were Isaiah and 
Micah. Isaiah is commonly referred to as 
the first Isaiah, to distinguish him from later 
prophets whose utterances have been incor- 
porated with his in the book that bears his 
name. He preached in Jerusalem from 740 
to 700 B.C. (Is. vi. 1). He had seen the 
capture of the northern kingdom. He had 
watched his own native Judah threatened 
with invasion by a coalition of the king of 
Israel and the king of Damascus. Now he 
saw signs of an Assyrian invasion and advised 
his king to steer clear of foreign alliances and 
trust Yahweh to take care of his people, for 
He would yet usher in "the glory of Judah" 
by the aid of a descendant of David (ix. 6, 7). 
But Hezekiah rejected the counsels of Isaiah. 

165 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

He boldly entered into an alliance with 
Egypt, only to meet with defeat at the hands 
of Sennacherib, whose invasion culminated in 
Judah's subjection to Assyria. In vain did 
Isaiah call the people to repentance and 
righteousness, which alone could save. Re- 
liance on the efficacy of sacrifices continued 
as before; the morality fundamentally essen- 
tial to prosperity and peace was not practised; 
trust in the omnipotence of the national God 
grew weak, and in consequence Yahweh's favor 
was withheld. Such was Isaiah's diagnosis 
of the situation and the language and imagery 
in which he clothed it stands unsurpassed in 
Hebrew literature for vigor, eloquence and 
depth of religious sentiment (i, v, x, xi). 

Micah, the younger contemporary of Isaiah, 
had much in his character corresponding to 
what we saw in Hosea; a sad, passionate, 
intense nature, overpowered by the corrup- 
tion of society and its impending fate, yet 
not without hope for a day of better things 
(iv. 1-5). He too, like Isaiah, expected the 
early coming of a king of David's line, and 

166 



THE PBOPHETS OF ISRAEL 

though in Christian times it was thought that 
these prophets referred to Jesus, the context 
and tone of their predictions furnish no 
warrant for this assumption. Corresponding 
to what we read in the first chapter of Isaiah's 
book is the sixth chapter of Micah's, showing 
how the supreme indignation of these prophets 
concerned the painful contrast between the 
profession of the people at their ceremonial 
worship and the shocking practices of their 
daily lives. What boots it, says Micah, that 
you sacrifice to Yahweh ? Even though a 
man should give his first-born son for a 
guilt-offering, it would avail him nothing. 
"He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; 
for what doth Yahweh require of thee, but 
to do justly, to love mercy and to walk in 
humility before thy God" (vi. 8). 

Reading the books of these four prophets 
from the point of view of the sins against 
which they inveighed, one is instantly im- 
pressed by the similarity of these sins to 
those conspicuous in our own civilization. 
First and foremost among the sinners who 

167 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

come under the condemnation of the prophets 
are certain monopolists. They extort high 
prices from the poor and show no benevo- 
lence or good will toward those who are un- 
able to protect themselves or to meet the 
high cost of living. Then there are certain 
retail dealers who cheat in the buying and 
selling of their goods, whose yard-sticks are 
short of the standard measure and whose 
weights are false. Judges, there are, who 
accept bribes, rendering deceitful decisions 
for the reward they will reap. Even prophets 
are found with mercenary motives, profes- 
sionally consulted by kings and deliberately 
predicting good fortune for the sake of the 
liberal fee that will follow. Priests, alas, 
there are who have no scruples about divert- 
ing to their own pockets money contributed 
for temple repairs. Society people there are, 
guilty of gross sensualism, of indulgence in 
carousals and revelries that stir the poor to re- 
bellion. Women, " walking with haughty mien 
and wanton eyes," overadorned "with chains 
and bracelets, head tires and sashes, rings and 

168 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

jewels, hand-mirrors and festal robes," these, 
Isaiah declares, will be smitten by Yahweh 
and "branding take the place of beauty." 

How familiar the list of evil-doers sounds ! 
How true it is that these prophets though 
dead yet speak ! What a veritable mine of 
moral inspiration their sermons are, with 
their powerful appeal, seeking to save the 
souls of men from their pitiable bondages, 
their fettering selfishnesses, their humiliating 
ambitions. How this old, old call for per- 
sonal morality, for singleness of heart and 
purity of mind comes home to our modern 
civilization with its feverish anxieties, its 
degrading slaveries, its paralyzing devotion to 
"the things that are seen and transient," its 
thoughtless disregard of "the things that are 
unseen and eternal," its passion for tangible 
palpable results, its blindness to the only 
results that are of deep and permanent 
worth ! Assuredly must we feel with the 
lamented James Darmesteter that "to go 
back to the prophets of Israel is not to retro- 
grade, but to progress," because they were 

169 



GREAT EELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

ahead of their time as well as abreast of it, 
because they saw that the true life of a people 
consists in their devotion to the moral ideal, 
and that without such devotion worship is 
mere mummery and prosperity animalism. 
Here is a moral message that answers the 
immediate need of our time better than any 
classical masterpiece of antiquity. And while 
we all agree with Matthew Arnold in his plea 
for "sweetness and light" in our life, yet 
more needed to-day is that righteousness, 
that sincerity, that conscience, which these 
great moral leaders in Israel made the burden 
of their appeal. 

Passing from the prophets of the eighth 
century to those of the seventh, we note 
Nahum and Zephaniah, both of whom saw 
the waning of Assyrian power and predicted 
its fall as a punishment for the cruelty 
and oppression practised upon the people 
of Yahweh. Then follows Habakkuk, giving 
point to the prophecy of his predecessors by 
declaring that the Chaldeans (Babylonians) 
are to overthrow the Assyrians. This they 

170 




MOSES. 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

did in 606 B.C., Judah thereby becoming 
a Babylonian dependency. But rebellion 
breaks out among the Judseans and Nebu- 
chadrezzar, the young king of Babylon, 
threatens to besiege Jerusalem and carry oflF 
her people to his capital on the Euphrates. 
And now it is that we are introduced to the 
master prophet of the century, perhaps of all 
the centuries, at once the most magnificent 
and the most pathetic personality in ancient 
Israel. Recall the main political and religious 
events that transpired toward the close of the 
seventh century. Egypt had forced Judah 
to pay tribute, only to be herself laid low by 
Babylon. Babylon in turn came into posses- 
sion of Judah as a result of the joint victory 
of the Medes and Babylonians over the 
Assyrians. Rebellion in Jerusalem followed, 
endangering the safety of the city. Manasseh, 
king of Judah, in the course of his fifty-five 
years' reign had undone all the religious re- 
forms of his predecessor Hezekiah. He had 
installed a variety of foreign idolatrous cults, 
reestablished the Canaanitish worship of Baal 

171 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

and the Ashera images, introduced sun-wor- 
ship and worship of the "hosts of heaven" 
and rebuilt the "high places" his father had 
destroyed. In short, the political and re- 
ligious situation was such as to shake the 
faith of Jerusalem's citizens as never before. 
Only one man there was who faltered not nor 
feared in this crisis of the nation's history; 
one who takes rank as the greatest statesman 
in the annals of Jerusalem, the most august 
and potent personality of the Chaldean period, 
the noblest figure in ancient Hebrew history, 
dean of the faculty of Hebrew prophets — 
Jeremiah. His mission it was to proclaim 
unpopular truths, to defy public opinion, to 
rebuke kings and counsellors, to champion 
hopeless minorities, to exercise gratuitous, 
fearless censorship over municipal morals, to 
mourn the degeneracy of cabinets and priest- 
hoods, to see the subjugation of his people by 
armed foes from without and scheming dema- 
gogues from within. Yet not once does he 
falter or fail in fealty to his high calling, not 
once does he blemish his stainless crest of 

172 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

consecration by compromise with truth or 
right, but preserves his integrity to the bitter 
end. Daring he was in his protests against 
wrong, dominated by an heroic imprudence, 
because his tender heart, sensitive as the 
strings of a Judaean harp, was cut to the 
quick by the tribulations of his people. 
Faithless though they were to their God and 
to his Law, Jeremiah never lost faith in 
their regenerative power. To the very last 
he served them as a prophet, with tireless 
patience and deathless hope. Statesman that 
he was he foresaw the rising power of Baby- 
lon, and realizing that military resistance 
was futile, he had the moral courage to advise 
physical submission to the foe. But the 
patriotism of a portion of the populace was 
of a cheaper kind, expressing itself in the cry 
for rebellion and the breaking of their treaty 
with Babylon. Whereupon Jeremiah put a 
wooden yoke about his neck to symbolize the 
duty of the hour, namely, surrender to a brief 
Babylonian captivity ; brief because Yahweh 
would bring speedy deliverance when chas- 

173 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

tisement had done its purifying work in the 
national heart. But an impatient, fiery mem- 
ber of the militant party, Hananiah by name, 
seized and broke the wooden yoke. "Then 
the word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah say- 
ing, go tell Hananiah who has broken the bars 
of wood that thou wilt make in their stead 
bars of iron" (Jer. xxviii. 12). And history 
promptly vindicated his forecast by prolonging 
the captivity for fifty years. But opposition 
to Jeremiah's ministry came, not only from 
the rebel element in the community, but also 
from the flourishing pseudo-prophetic party, 
of whom he complained that they rocked the 
people in a false security (vi. 14), that in- 
stead of warning the nation, they confirmed 
it in its sin (xxiii. 17). Smooth talkers 
they were who, to gain popularity and pros- 
perity, sought to assure the people that no 
real harm would come to them. Peace, they 
predicted, would prevail, adding that even if 
war were to come, Egypt could be relied on 
for efficient help. They advocated a kind of 
primitive Monroe Doctrine according to which 

174 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

the armies of Pharaoh could be counted on in 
an emergency. But when the crisis came, 
Pharaoh had pressing business of his own to 
attend to. Had there been newspapers in 
Jeremiah's time, he would have written edi- 
torials on the political situation and the duty 
of patriots. As it was, he put a yoke round 
his neck and taking his stand by the temple 
gate advised acquiescence in the captivity 
which Yahweh had preordained as the instru- 
ment to bring the nation to righteousness. 
His advice was not taken, but the city was. 
Surely if ever a man fell on evil times, it was 
Jeremiah, for he had to face the severest 
ordeal that a patriot and prophet could be 
called to endure. He had to stand by and 
see his country invaded by a foreign foe, his 
beloved Jerusalem sacked, burned and laid 
waste. He did all in his power to stem the 
tide of national decline and for a reward he 
was pilloried in the public square, lowered 
into a muddy cistern, dungeoned in prison. 
During the terrible siege of Jerusalem, that 
was to end in the destruction of the Jewish 

175 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

state, Jeremiah bought a field in the heart of 
the town and executed the deed of contract 
to demonstrate his faith that Judah would 
be restored and a glorious future await the 
people of Yahweh. While in prison he dic- 
tated to his secretary, Baruch, the sermons 
he had preached in the course of his twenty- 
two years' ministry, bidding him read them 
aloud in the temple on the next fast-day. 
Word of this plan reached the ears of the 
priests and they promptly notified the nobles, 
who, in turn, apprised the king. He was 
sitting in his winter palace before the open 
fireplace when the manuscript, which he had 
ordered to be brought to him, was read. 
Calling for a knife he cut the scrolls into strips 
and threw them into the fire. Thus did his- 
tory repeat itself. How often have ecclesi- 
astical and political despots tried to crush 
free thought and free speech by burning the 
books and the bodies of the authors, whose 
convictions were brighter than flames and, 
like asbestos, withstood the fire that was 
meant to consume them ! Nay more, the 

176 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

ashes of the books and of the writers have 
proved powerful fertiHzers of repudiated truth. 
Jeremiah rewrote the sermons and we are 
told that "he added much more besides," 
only, however, to be banished to Egypt, that 
treacherous land against which he had warned 
his fellow-countrymen in vain. There, after 
more than forty years of consecrated service, 
he died a martyr's death, stoned by the 
people for whose kinsmen he had labored so 
devotedly and so long. Surely to him we 
may fittingly apply those noble lines of the 
last verse of the last poem from Browning's 
pen, for Jeremiah also was 

" One who never turned his back. 
But marched breast forward, 
Never doubted clouds would break ; 
Never dreamed though right were worsted. 

Wrong would triumph ; 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better ; 
Sleep to wake.'* 

The prophets of the exile in Babylon were 
Ezekiel and the second Isaiah. Though pri- 
marily a priest, deeply concerned about the 
ritual (for in Babylon there was neither 
N 177 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

Jewish temple nor sacrifice), Ezekiel fulfilled 
the part of prophet, witness those chapters of 
his book in which he arraigns foreign nations 
and comforts his fellow-countrymen with the 
conviction that the captivity was designed 
by Yahweh to purify his people and prepare 
them for blessings yet to be.^ Ezekiel antici- 
pated, not only the restoration of the people 
to Canaan, to be ruled over by a king of 
David's line, as of old, but also the rebuilding 
of the temple and on a more magnificent 
scale than before. In the light of this expec- 
tation he drew up a constitution, or religious 
code, for the new era. It was drafted in the 
form of a vision, replete with imagery that 
suggests the influence of Babylonian beliefs 
upon the prophet's own thought.^ But when 
the people returned to Jerusalem, they were 
altogether too poor to execute Ezekiel's ex- 
tensive and magnificent plans. 

Toward the close of the Babylonian exile, 
Persia had grown so powerful that to the 
statesmen-prophets it seemed probable that 

* Ezek. xxv-xxxii, xxxvii. * Ibid, xl-xlviii. 

178 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

release from captivity would soon be obtained. 
With the Persian conquest of Babylonia their 
expectation was fulfilled. Chief among He- 
brew leaders at the close of the exilian era 
was the second Isaiah. He has been so 
named to distinguish him from the earlier 
Isaiah of Hezekiah's time, to whose writings 
those of this prophet were somehow appended, 
perhaps because his name also was Isaiah. 
Certain at least it is, in the light of internal 
evidence, that the last twenty-six chapters of 
the book of Isaiah belong to a period two 
centuries or more removed from those earlier 
chapters that are identified with the first 
Isaiah. Our interest in the exilian Isaiah 
centres upon his poetic, deeply religious inter- 
pretation of "the righteous remnant" of the 
nation in Babylon, atoning by their suffering 
for the sins of all the rest. Nowhere in He- 
brew literature is there a loftier description 
of innocent souls suffering and atoning for 
the sins of others than in the passage from 
the book of Isaiah which extends from the 
thirteenth verse of the fifty-second chapter to 

179 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

the end of the fifty-third. Here the spiritual 
kernel of the nation is personified under the 
title of "the suffering servant of Yahweh," 
undergoing all manner of affliction for the 
sake of the unrighteous multitude. No won- 
der this passage came to be applied to Jesus 
and to be construed as a prediction of his 
advent, albeit that the context clearly shows 
that the author had only his own contem- 
poraries in mind, the personified ''righteous 
remnant" of the nation. Very significant is 
the language in which the second Isaiah 
described the great Persian King, Cyrus. He 
refers to him as ''Yahweh's shepherd," as 
*'the Anointed One," the "righteous."^ 
Under his regime it was that the exilian hope 
of restoration to Canaan was fulfilled. In 
535 B.C. Cyrus gave permission to the cap- 
tives in Babylon to return to Jerusalem and 
a goodly portion of the people availed them- 
selves of the privilege. Foremost among the 
prophets of the return were Haggai and Zech- 
ariah.^ They exhort the people to rebuild the 

» xli. 2 ; xlv. 1-4. ^ xhe author of i-viii. 

180 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

temple, live in righteousness and hope for the 
blessing of their God. 

With the rebuilding of the temple the 
priests were once more in the ascendant, and 
their importance was considerably accen- 
tuated by the fact that political independence 
had long been a thing of the past, so that 
interest came to be increasingly focussed upon 
the national religion. Add to this the steady 
growth of Pentateuchal legislation, designed 
as it was to keep the nation loyal to Yahweh 
and also distinct from the surrounding peoples, 
and we have a further reason for the increasing 
dominance of the priesthood. No wonder, 
then, that in the fifth and fourth centuries 
prophecy should have declined, Malachi, Joel 
and the later Zechariah^ prophesying, indeed, 
yet showing unmistakable signs of the change 
that was taking place in the religious organi- 
zation and life of the people. In other words, 
with the development of the religious "Law" 
and the concomitant rise of its guardians to 
the highest place in the nation's esteem, the 

* Zech. ix-xi, xii-xiv. 
181 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

written Word took the place of the immediate 
revelation of Yahweh to his servants, the 

s 

prophets. 

Early in the history of the Christian 
church, it was proposed to withdraw the 
Old Testament from the canon of Christian 
scriptures and make it consist of the New 
Testament alone, but the proposition failed 
to carry and deservedly so. For it* would 
have robbed the Christian scriptures of that 
ethical message of the great moral leaders, in 
Israel, which takes rank among the supreme 
and permanent Spiritual assets of the race. 
In the hearts of Israel's prophets the sense 
of duty burned with an unsurpassed intensity 
and glow. And this, as Professor Adler has 
recently observed, "explains their capacity 
for moral indignation, the august authority 
with which they speak, as though the Moral 
Law were uttering itself through them." 
It explains also the precision with which they 
point to the root-sin of the nation, the light- 
ning stroke with which they smite the 
guilty soul and the soothing balm of comfort 

182 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

they instil into doubting and despondent 
hearts. 

Not only did there burn within the pro- 
phets the sense of duty, but there also shone 
the star of hope, even in the darkest days of 
national corruption and dissolution. Nor is 
there anything more wonderful and inspiring 
than' the undying faith of these great moral 
leaders in the coming of a day of better 
things, a faith which took on increasing 
definiteness and concreteness with the years, 
culminating in the conception of a Messianic 
Kingdom of God on earth, a Commonwealth 
of Man, a City of the Light, "from whose 
borders wrong is banished, where justice 
reigns supreme o'er all, and only righteous 
men and women dwell." Despite all the 
sufferings of chastisement for idolatry and 
sin, never did the patriotic hope die out that 
Yahweh would redeem his chosen people and 
reestablish them in their former home. 

Other nations, notably the Persians, have 
shown themselves capable of patriotic effort 
for freedom and resistance to foreign pressure 

183 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

through centuries of subjugation. But the 
Jewish patriotism is unhke them all because 
it was quickened and organized by religious 
feeling, by the mighty conception of a cove- 
nant according to which Yahweh had chosen 
Israel from among all the nations of the 
earth and had promised his blessing forever 
on conditions that they prove loyal and 
obedient. In the light of that covenant each 
new subjugation in turn was interpreted, 
chastisement being but the intended prepara- 
tion for a glorious future. Assyria, Egypt, 
Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, each in turn 
held the Hebrews in subjection, yet never did 
they lose their grip on the belief that all the 
nations of the earth would come to the knowl- 
edge of Yahweh and His Law and so share the 
,Kingdom He would prepare for His chosen ones. 
Even Amos, whose prophecy is preemi- 
nently pessimistic, has a vision of Israel, 
sifted as is corn in a sieve, and Yahweh 
suflPering not a single grain to fall to the 
earth.^ Hosea sees the branches of Israel 

^ Amos ix. 9. 
184 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

spread their beauty like those of the olive 
tree and all who dwell under their shadow 
rejoicing in the ways of the Lord.^ Isaiah, 
living in the thick of the Assyrian invasion, 
draws a dark picture of what must follow the 
corruption of Israel, but beyond the gloom he 
descries the outline of a regenerated nation 
ruled by a blameless King in righteousness 
and in peace.^ Jeremiah, though chastise- 
ment is his dominant thought, never believed 
in the ruin of his people. Rather did he see 
in Nebuchadrezzar the instrument whereby 
Yahweh accomplished his beneficent punish- 
ment of a recalcitrant people. Into captivity 
must they go 'but only to be in due time 
restored to their own land and live pros- 
perously under one of their own princes and 
with a new covenant, Yahweh writing His 
Law into their hearts.^ The exilian Isaiah 
carries the prophetic optimism further still, 
idealizing Israel herself into a divinely ap- 
pointed instrument for the enlightening and 

1 Hosea xiv. 6. ^Is.id. 1-9. 

« Jer. xxxi. 31-34. 

185 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

healing of the nations. They shall see Jeru- 
salem the capital of a heaven on earth in 
which all the world will be blessed.^ Joel 
and the third Zechariah, living in the period 
of the Greek rule, echo the exalted strain, 
while the author of the ninth chapter of Isaiah, 
the contemporary of these prophets, enlarges 
upon the vision still more, telling of the 
Davidic King whose dynasty shall last for- 
ever and who shall be called "Immanuel, 
Wonderful, Counsellor, Prince of Peace." 
And when prophecy had died out in Israel 
and given place to priestly and scribal au- 
thorities, the ancient patriotic hope still con- 
tinued to glow, witness the Apocalyptic lit- 
erature, the books of the "Apocrypha" and 
of the "Pseudepigrapha," notably the "Psal- 
ters of Solomon" in which the term "Mes- 
siah" is applied to the Davidic King, coming 
in glory to establish the Kingdom of God on 
earth. Thence we pass to the still later por- 
traitures of the New Testament books, in the 
latest of which, written in the middle of the 

1 Is. Ixvi. 20-22. 
186 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

second century of our era, we read the pathetic 
query, "Where is the promise of his coming, for 
since the fathers fell asleep all things remain 
as they were from the beginning." ^ 

From that day to this the heavens have 
remained silent ; the old order of the world has 
gone on as of yore and Israel's hope, born in 
the days of Amos and developed throughout 
the succeeding seven centuries into a mighty 
"Messianic" expectation, remains void of 
fulfilment. 

Was it, then, an empty, baseless dream ? 
Nay, rather was it the expression of that death- 
less hope in the human heart that truth will 
prevail and justice be victorious. Such, at 
least, was the essence, the soul of that age- 
long Hebrew hope. Nor is there any other 
factor in social progress so indispensable as 
this very expectancy. "Unless your soul 
dwells in Utopia," said President Jordan, "life 
is not worth the keeping." What, under 
heaven, is there to sustain us in our work for 
social reform except the spell exercised upon us 

1 2 Pet. iii. 4. 
187 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

by the vision of the Commonwealth of Man, the 
expectation of triumphant justice and broth- 
erhood as a normal occurrence that must some 
day come to pass ? What thought, I ask, is 
uppermost in our minds ? Ah, there is only 
one thought worthy to be treasured there, the 
thought that was cherished by the prophets 
of Israel, the thought of never dying realities 
to which we are allied, the thought of a soul in 
man impelled by a mighty urge to ends of 
infinite worth, the thought that we are less 
than the lower orders of animal life if we be not 
moved with an unceasing purpose to fit our- 
selves for supernal things. Strip the ancient 
Hebrew hope of its local, transient element, and 
what remains is an everlasting source of in- 
spiration for America and for the world. 'Tis 
the thought of an ideal social order yet to be, 
in which no one will treat another as merely a 
means to his ends, but also as an end in him- 
I self; in which life, liberty, the pursuit of 
\ happiness, culture, will be a possibility for all 
instead of for only the few ; in which all men 
and women shall attain, not as serfs, but as 

188 



THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 

free intelligent agents, through the willing 
cooperation of each with all, the things that 
are most worth while. Such is the permanent 
in the transient Messianic hope of ancient 
Israel. It warrants the statement, that as long 
as man lives on this planet, they who wish to 
make progress in the upper zones of their being 
must turn to Israel for inspiration, to those 
prophets of the Old Testament who saw in 
righteousness the very core of religion and who 
held with unceasing and unflagging zeal the 
mighty expectation of a coming Commonwealth 
of Man. 



189 



VI 

JESUS 



VI 

JESUS 

TN this series of lectures on great moral 
leaders of the Orient we have consulted 
only first-hand sources of information. What, 
then, is the fountain-source of our knowledge 
concerning Jesus ? Unlike Confucius and Mo- 
hammed, Jesus wrote nothing. His immediate 
disciples, with the possible exception of Mat- 
thew, wrote nothing. The members of the 
first Christian Church at Jerusalem wrote 
nothing, being illiterate, poor and preoccu- 
pied with the practical needs of the com- 
munity.^ The earliest writings in the New 
Testament are letters ascribed to the apostle 
Paul. According to his own testimony, he 
never saw Jesus except in a vision and these 
letters, written twenty -five years after the 
death of Jesus, furnish no information con- 

1 1 Cor. i. 6. 
o 193 



GKEAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

cerning his life. They begin with his death 
and resurrection and the theory of salvation 
built thereon. "'Acts," "'Revelation," the 
non-Pauline epistles, no one of these throws 
any light on the life of Jesus. The "fourth 
gospel" has theological and ethical rather than 
historical and biographical value. ^ Thus we are 
restricted to the first three gospels, the so-called 
"Synoptics," since they "look together," 
from a common standpoint, at Jesus' life. 
Comparing them, we find that despite their 
various points of difference, they present a 
story of the life of Jesus on which all three agree, 
and which the late Prof. E. A. Abbott of 
London has entitled "the triple tradition." 
Turning to this harmony of the Synoptics, 
we note how little there is on which all three 
agree compared to their total content. It 
reminds us of the "Gathas," where we ob- 
served how little authentic information there 
is concerning Zoroaster. Excepting only him, 
less is known of Jesus than of any other of the 
great moral leaders of the Orient. We do not 

iJohni. 1-18; xx. 31. 
194 



JESUS 

know the year, month, day, or place of his 
birth. December 25 is only the guess of the 
early Christian missionaries at the time they 
were converting the Roman Empire to Chris- 
tianity. Bethlehem as the birthplace of Jesus 
was only a "Messianic" guess on the part of 
the authors of the first and third gospels. 
Still, meagre as are the details of Jesus' life 
recorded in the triple tradition, dense as is our 
ignorance concerning eighteen of his thirty 
years on earth, silent as are the Synoptics 
on many points about which we long to be 
informed, obvious and numerous as are the 
defects of the record itself, the personality 
of Jesus stands forth in clear and definite 
outline. The notion that he never existed 
at all, — first entertained by the "Docetists" 
in the second century and recently revived, on 
other grounds, by native and foreign schol- 
ars, — is not to be accepted merely because 
of the disappointment engendered by read- 
ing the record. In that case we should be 
obliged to discredit the existence of Julius 
Csesar or Hannibal. Nor, again, will it do to 

195 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

deny the historicity of Jesus on the ground that 
the chief classical writers of the first century 
make only passing allusion to him. For it 
must be remembered that Jesus was born in a 
remote, insignificant, despised province of the 
Roman empire and was therefore regarded 
by the authorities at Rome as an obscure up- 
start, a creator of sedition, a Galilean peasant, 
reproducing a familiar local sensation. Had 
Jesus been born at Rome, or Alexandria, or 
some other important centre of the empire, 
and there fulfilled his mission, we would have 
reason to expect fuller details from the Roman 
historians of his time. But even as it is, we 
have the testimony of Tacitus, whom Gibbon 
and Froude have praised as an authority of the 
first rank and whose evidence is not to be 
esteemed a "forgery of Bracciolini," as certain 
shallow radicals have sought to show. The 
passage is to be foiind in the fifteenth book of 
the "Annals" and every impartial reader will 
feel from the context and form, despite the 
brevity of the passage, its genuineness. 
"Christ, from whom the Christian sect de- 

196 



JESUS 

rived its name, had been put to death in the 
reign of Tiberius by the procurator, Pontius 
Pilate." Thus the argument for the non- 
existence of Jesus, based on the scanty in- 
formation furnished by the earUest Christian 
sources, and on the incidental, brief refer- 
ences to Jesus in contemporary classical litera- 
ture, breaks down. And the same may be said, 
I think, of the other current arguments de- 
signed to disprove the historicity of Jesus. 
Looking at the subject from a positive stand- 
point, the belief that Jesus did exist is grounded, 
not only on the testimony we have just con- 
sidered, but also on the portraiture of the 
Messianic function as attributed to Jesus in 
the Synoptics, so radically different from the 
popular Jewish conception of the office as to 
be absolutely inexplicable there, had not some 
one actually impersonated the part. Further- 
more, the many legends woven about his per- 
sonality prove, as does nothing else, not only 
his existence, but his spiritual greatness. For 
such stories as are related of him did not origi- 
nate until one equal to generating such ideas 

197 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

had lived. Legends always adorn, they do 
not create personaHties. They are the vines 
of grateful reverence and appreciation that 
twine about the tree of soul-greatness. Weems 
did not start with a hatchet story and other 
legends and then attach them to a Washing- 
ton. Nor is the Lincoln myth, now in process 
of formation, independent of the historical 
emancipator of the slaves. Still more strongly 
is the historicity of Jesus attested by the reason 
for the conversion of Constantine and for the 
triumph of Christianity over the most power- 
ful of its early rivals, Mithraism. The reason 
was that the Christians could point to an 
actual human being as their pattern and ideal, 
and no follower of Mithraism denied it; 
whereas the Mithraists had for their supreme 
object of veneration only an abstraction, a 
beautiful, ennobling personification of light; 
but, after all, only an ethereal abstraction. 
For this reason, above all else, did Christian- 
ity win the battle of the sects for control of the 
Roman empire. And Constantine was saga- 
cious enough to see the superiority of a religion 

198 




JESUS. 



JESUS 

with a human founder and guide to one whose 
leader was only a product of the imagination of 
his worshippers. 

Of the physical appearance of Jesus we know 
absolutely nothing. No authentic portrait 
has come down to us. We search the litera- 
ture of the first century in vain for some allu- 
sion to the subject. Yet why should any refer- 
ence have been made to the personal appear- 
ance of Jesus ? Did not his Jewish contem- 
poraries in Palestine expect his return to earth 
before their own generation had passed away ? 
Had he not said he would return ? Why, then, 
should there be any thought of describing his 
appearance or even of recording what he had 
said and done ? Popular expectancy was such 
as to preclude concern for a biography of Jesus 
and only when hope waned and disappoint- 
ment over the delay in his coming grew intense, 
did the serious work of recollecting, writing 
and transmitting begin. The earliest refer- 
ence to the physical appearance of Jesus is 
found in the works of Justin, the martyr, 
written about the middle of the second century. 

199 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

Jesus, he said, looked just as the Scriptures 
said he would look, quoting the fifty-third 
chapter of Isaiah, where it is written, "He hath 
no form nor comeliness, and when we see him 
there is no beauty that we should desire him." 
Thus, reading into this passage, a description 
of Jesus' appearance, Justin concluded he was 
not externally attractive. In the absence of re- 
liable information we are, as Renan remarked, 
'"at liberty to think as we please." This, in- 
deed, is what all painters and sculptors through7 
out the Christian centuries have done. And of 
all historic representations of Jesus, perhaps 
that of Leonardo, — the central figure of his 
"Last Supper," — satisfied and stood su- 
preme, because of its marvellous rendering of 
the distinctive qualities of Jesus' character. 

Socially, Jesus was not at all the ascetic 
that medisevalism and its modern representa- 
tives would have us believe. Though he had 
much in common with the Essenes, there is no 
evidence to indicate that he was of their 
number, nor have we any reason to think he 
was the precursor of Puritan abstinences and 

200 



JESUS 

prohibitions. On the contrary, the Synop- 
tics impress us with a pronounced sense of the 
humanity of Jesus, of the blood in his veins 
running ruddy and warm, of his wit and humor, 
his responsiveness to every experience that 
would make a strong human appeal. We have 
the stories of his dining with distinguished per- 
sons and the criticism his acceptance of their 
invitations provoked. We have the parables, 
with their sensitiveness to beauty and joy and 
love. Add to these the tender verses that 
relate his taking little children in his arms and 
blessing them and the story of the wedding- 
feast at Cana which, though peculiar to the 
fourth gospel, may be rooted in a genuine 
tradition that escaped the attention of the 
Synoptists. 

Intellectually, Jesus was a free thinker, free 
from the trammels of tradition, free to follow 
his own independent thought. At every crisis 
in his life he proved himself a sceptic in the 
true and noble sense of that word. Accord- 
ing to its derivation, the word sceptic means 
one who shades his eyes to look steadfastly 

201 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

at an object. The sceptic is one who shades 
his eyes from prejudice, predilection, bias, 
from everything calculated to prevent his 
looking steadfastly for the truth, eager above 
all else not to be deceived or misled in his 
search for truth. Hence, consecrated doubt 
was a characteristic of Jesus' thought; the 
doubt that puts things to the proof and so 
strengthens faith. At the age of twelve it 
was doubt that drew him to the temple to seek 
solutions for vexing question from the doctors 
of the law. When he was twenty-eight or 
twenty-nine, it was doubt that drove him into 
the wilderness, there to settle the open ques- 
tion concerning his choice of a Messianic 
career. A little later, it was doubt that led 
him into the garden and the cold midnight air, 
the agony of Gethsemane culminating in con- 
quered doubt. And when, at last, he came to 
the cross, there every wound pleaded with 
silent eloquence that men should be sincere, 
consecrated, loyal to their inmost convictions 
even though their only reward be a crown of 
thorns, their only sympathy the powerless 

202 



JESUS 

tears of friends, their deathbed a cross. To 
estimate in any adequate degree a truly great 
personahty is one of the most dijQScult of tasks. 
Indeed it defies achievement, the very great- 
ness of the personality forbidding analysis 
and exhaustive explanation. This much, how- 
ever, may be said of such an one, viz. that he 
owes his greatness, not so much to the posses- 
sion of any attributes that differentiate him 
from others, as to his own sublime embodiment 
of qualities that are universal. Sincerity, 
sympathy, consecration, trust; these are at- 
tributes of character known in every age and 
in every land. And the essential greatness 
of Jesus "consists in his particular manifesta- 
tion of these universal qualities. Differ as 
men do in their theories of the person of Jesus, 
all unite in their recognition of these cardinal 
attributes of his character ; all are agreed that 
Jesus will be forever remembered, reverenced 
and loved for his unswerving loyalty to his 
convictions, his unsurpassed sympathy for 
men, his unalloyed consecration to a great 
life-purpose, his undying trust in a Power 

203 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

higher than man. The time limit prescribed 
for this lecture forbids my dwelling at length 
upon these qualities. I must be content 
merely to touch upon them and reserve for 
another season what must be omitted now. 

1. The crowning attribute in the character 
of Jesus was his loyalty to conviction, his 
white-mindedness, his spiritual integrity. His 
soul was on jBre with mighty convictions and 
he held to them with an adamantine inflexi- 
bility. He believed that soon the existing 
order of humanity would pass away and be 
replaced by a new and higher type, "the King- 
dom of Heaven," a society in which justice 
and love would be the sole ruling principles of 
conduct; prosperity, peace and joy be the 
possession of all who dwell therein. Despite 
all the oppression, cruelty, despotism of his 
day, despite all the unpromising political and 
social conditions of his time, Jesus dared to 
entertain the magnijBcent dream of a renovated 
world. He believed that morality is progres- 
sive, that the ethical code of one age is not 
necessarily sufficient for the needs of the next. 

204 



JESUS 



Strong and deep as was his reverence for the 
Sinai Commandments he yet felt that they 
did not exhaust the possibiHties of the human 
spirit. He respected the authority of Moses, 
but he did not regard it as final. If we would 
be like Jesus, then, like him, we must be true 
to truth and dare, if need be, to differ from him 
as he dared to differ from Moses. Rather 
than be false to his convictions and betray his 
soul, he preferred persecution, ignominy, death. 
The luxury of his convictions was more pre- 
cious to him than the luxury of existence. 
Life to him meant an untrammelled mind, an 
unpolluted conscience, an unsullied soul. And 
in these days of intellectual dishonesties, prac- 
tised to a deplorable extent by clergy and 
laity alike, how tremendous is the need of 
turning again to this crowning grace in the 
character of Jesus and drawing inspiration 
from the contemplation of it. While he was 
still on earth there were those to whom Jesus 
said, "Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not 
the things which I say ? " And this class has 
never been left without a witness in any age. 

205 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

2. To understand his unsurpassed sym- 
pathy for man we have only to recall the age 
in which it appeared. An age of cruelty, 
tyranny, oppression; an age in which prov- 
inces were sacked to pay the cost of gorgeous 
ceremonies and processions of royalty, an age 
in which the wealth of colonies was drained 
to furnish sumptuous feasts for selfish states- 
men, an age in which brotherhood was a 
synonym for clique or class. In such an age 
Jesus revived the ancient protest of humanity, 
summing up his solution of the social problem 
in terms of sympathy. Love was to be the 
solvent in which all hatreds and jealousies 
would melt away. The redeeming power of a 
great spiritual love, — that was the gospel 
he brought to his age and to our age, too ; for 
we know that if we are fine enough, and have 
enough of the heart culture that was in Jesus, 
if our love is strong enough, deep enough, wise 
enough, patient enough, then no human soul, 
however degraded, can be beyond the reach 
of our redeeming love. Truly does the sym- 
pathy that was in Jesus flood the gospel story 

206 



JESUS 

as the waters of the sea flood its basin and shore. 
His love went out hopefully, confidently, help- 
fully to all sorts and conditions of men, even 
to the very lowest, because he believed that 
the essential worth of each human being lies 
only and always in his potentialities, in that 
image of the divine in which he was potentially 
made. Even in the abyss of shame and 
wretchedness of the erring woman, he held that 
there lies a hidden power of salvation, a pos- 
sibility of rebirth into the moral life. Jesus 
by his gentleness denied the existence of hope- 
less castaways. To him who prided himself 
on his righteousness Jesus opposed the sinner 
who smote himself on the breast while asking 
pardon for his sins and declared this latter 
nearer perfection than the former. The prodi- 
gal son no less than the elder son in the par- 
able is, in Jesus' eyes, a child of the Eternal 
Goodness. Thus, to give courage to the sin- 
ful, even to the most hardened ; to reanimate 
their energies by words of hope, even when 
to human view all seems lost ; never to despair 
of finding, even in the worst of men, some germ 

207 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

of that divine life which he has stifled and pro- 
faned, but has not been able to destroy, some 
remains of that moral dignity on which he has 
trampled, but not killed; to abate the pride 
of the self-righteous by making them sensible 
of their wretchedness, to humiliate the self- 
complacent by showing them that their self- 
satisfaction is the sign of their backwardness, 
to open to all the vision of ever closer ap- 
proximation to the perfect, on the road to 
which all have entered, diflfering only in the 
degree of progress they have made, — this is 
the sublime method of the gospel of Jesus. 

3. What was the special life-purpose to 
which he consecrated his life ? It was to pre- 
pare the largest possible number of men and 
women for membership in the new Kingdom of 
Heaven, so soon to appear upon the earth. 
There can be no grander aim than that. And 
there is more hope for the world in one Jesus, 
with such an aim, than in ten thousand men, 
trained to scientific habits of thought, yet 
without any such transcendent aim to which 
their thought shall tend. 

208 



JESUS 

4. Though the God-idea has undergone con- 
siderable change since Jesus' day, his trust in 
God, in "the Power that makes for righteous- 
ness," in the triumph of truth, justice and 
love, remains unchanged and indispensable. 
How imperative it is, that amid the inequities 
and iniquities of modern life, we possess this 
spirit of trust. In our fight against these evils 
what is there to sustain us, to save us from 
being victimized by scepticism and pessimism; 
what is there to prevent the loss of spiritual 
poise and peace, except the laying firm hold 
of this trust that was in the heart of Jesus ? 

Speaking for myself, — and I have no right 
to speak for any one else, — I confess that 
while I cannot accept the teachings of Jesus 
with reference to marriage, divorce, wealth, 
intellectual and aesthetic pursuits ; while I 
cannot share his belief in a miraculously es- 
tablished Kingdom of Heaven on earth, I do 
find in him an ever inspiring exemplar of sin- 
cerity, sympathy, consecration and trust. If 
I were to say in just one word what Jesus is 
to me it would be inspiration. Who of us 

p 209 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

can contemplate his loyalty to conviction and 
at the same time be indifferent to that which is 
holiest and highest in ourselves ? Who of us 
can meditate upon his sympathy for man and 
then turn a deaf ear to the calls for sympathy 
and practical helpfulness that appeal to us from 
every side ? Who of us can ponder his devo- 
tion to a life-aim transcendently beautiful and 
then be indifferent to the promptings of the 
inner voice that bids us live the divine life? 
Who can recall his deep-seated trust in the ulti- 
mate triumph of truth and right, the reign of 
justice and love, and not feel moved to a like 
peace-giving trust ? 

We hear a great deal in our day about "liv- 
ing a spiritual life." Considerable vagueness 
and piousness have gathered about that phrase; 
yet in its essence it is nothing but living this 
very life that Jesus lived, manifesting in our 
lesser lives that same spiritual greatness that 
was revealed by him. To stand upon our 
own feet, to exercise a manly self-reliance, to 
maintain our own convictions, let the opposi- 
tion be what it may, to cultivate the spirit of 

210 



JESUS 

sympathy and helpfulness for our fellow-men, 
and, above all, to be steadfastly devoted to an 
ideal life-aim, all the while sustained and in- 
spired by faith in the Eternal Right, — this is 
what we understand by living a spiritual life. 
And no more radiant example of it has ever 
been furnished the world than that which we 
see in Jesus. 

In the transition from Judaism to Chris- 
tianity Jesus occupies a very definite and dis- 
tinctive place. Just as Gotama, the Buddha, 
was born and died a Brahman and as out of his 
protest against certain defects in Brahmanism 
Buddhism arose, so Jesus, the Christ, was 
born and died a Jew, and out of his protest 
against certain defects in Judaism there arose 
the Christian ethics, for which the apostle 
Paul furnished the theological framework. 
What was this protest of Jesus ? It was a 
protest against the external, formal character 
of contemporary Jewish ethics; against a 
morality of mere conformity to and compli- 
ance with the demands of an external standard 
of conduct, and in favor of a morality of the 

211 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

spirit that takes account of the hidden motives 
behind all human actions. "Fulfil the law 
of righteousness," — this was the Hebrew an- 
swer to the question, What is the chief end of 
man ? That law originally consisted of a 
few simple rules, but eventually it was ex- 
panded into the elaborate system of legisla- 
tion found in the Pentateuch, and this, in turn, 
became the basis for further legislation, pre- 
served in the Talmud. Thus by the time 
Jesus appeared Judaism had developed ,an 
immense mass of rules and regulations for the 
conduct of life, and goodness meant conform- 
ity to the requirements of this outward stand- 
ard. But by its very externalism and formal 
character the system tended to draw the heart 
and the will away from those inward sources 
of right action on which alone their true moral 
quality depends. Life became split up into 
innumerable forms of conduct, each having 
its own particular law or rule, to violate which 
was sin. No distinction being drawn between 
kinds of sin, it was held that he who offends in 
one point of the law offends in all, — a posi- 

212 



JESUS 

tion clearly stated in the epistle of James (ii. 
10). As a result Judaism tended to despiritu- 
alize life and by its stress on conformity to an 
external standard of conduct as the test of 
goodness, to make the latter a garment that 
might be put on or off, rather than a constant, 
maintained habit of the soul. Already in the 
seventh century this danger in the develop- 
ment of Judaism was recognized by the Deu- 
teronomist. Read his passionate plea in the 
thirtieth chapter of Deuteronomy that men 
should look within and see Yahweh's will 
written in their own hearts. Later came Jere- 
miah and Ezekiel with their appeal for the 
performance of the righteousness that is in 
the heart. Still later came the psalmists of the 
Greek and of the Maccabean period, with their 
spiritual songs on the need of "a clean heart" 
and of ''renewal of spirit," intimating their 
consciousness of a morality of the spirit which 
goes back of rules and regulations to motives 
and aims and which is therefore deeper than 
the morality of conformity and compliance. 
But no one, not even the great Hillel, — who 

213 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

was an old man when Jesus was an infant, — 
had sought to separate this spiritual righteous- 
ness from the system of legislation in which it 
lay embedded and lift it to a commanding 
place in the ordering of daily life. Mark you, 
it must not be said that Judaism was deficient 
in spirituality. Any one familiar with the 
literature between the Old and New Testa- 
ments knows there was no lack of this grace 
even when the legal system was most elaborate 
and detailed. But no one had extricated this 
morality of the spirit — recognized and taught 
as it was by the immediate predecessor of 
Jesus — out from the mass of legislation and 
made it the corner-stone of the moral life. 
This it remained for Jesus to achieve and in 
achieving it, he transcended the Judaism of his 
time. Perceiving that the spirit behind an act 
is what gives it moral worth, Jesus took this 
spiritual morality out from the mass of rules 
where Hillel had left it and made it the su- 
preme and controlling principle of conduct. 
Higher than the morality of obedience to an 
external standard of Jewish law is the moraUty 

214 



JESUS 

of obedience to an internal standard which 
cannot be gauged by any mechanical means 
whatsoever. Higher than visible conformity 
to rules regarding what must be done and still 
more regarding what must not be done, is the 
invisible motive behind that conformity. Such 
was the contribution of Jesus to Judaism. 
Herein lay his originality. I grant with the 
distinguished Rabbi Hirsch that Jesus uttered 
no new maxims, that one can match every pre- 
cept of the sermon on the mount in contem- 
porary or earlier Jewish literature. I grant 
that in method and in thought Jesus was a 
Jewish "haggadist," that his similes are indige- 
nous to the "Midrash" and were frequently 
used in the picture-language of the rabbinical 
homilies. I grant that in none of these re- 
spects has he the slightest claim to originality, 
yet it still remains true that there is another 
respect in which that claim of originality may 
be legitimately made for him. For the origi- 
nal reformer is not only he who first conceives a 
fruitful idea, but also he who plants it in many 
minds and fertilizes it there by the persuasive 

215 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

power of his own quickening personality. To 
this type of original reformers Jesus belonged. 
He preached the loftiest moral conceptions 
his race had won, and vitalized them by his 
commanding, winning presence. Even as the 
transcendent merit of the tree consists in its 
drawing from the surrounding air, earth and 
water, the materials wherewith to build the 
strength of its trunk and the beauty of its 
foliage, so the transcendent merit of Jesus 
lay in his drawing from earlier and contem- 
porary literature the material wherewith to 
make his gospel a source of strength and in- 
spiration, stamping what he borrowed with 
his own spiritual genius.^ And this genius 
showed itself nowhere more grandly than in 
the way he related his gospel to the Jewish 
law, presenting it as simply a development, an 
expansion, a deepening of that law. Jesus 
never cut himself off from Judaism, never 
attempted to organize a new religion. On the 
contrary, he was throughout his entire life a 
loyal Jew, observing all the ordinances. He 

1 Rabbi E. G. Hirsch, The Crucifixion. 
216 



JESUS 

kept the fasts and feasts of the Hebrew calen- 
dar.^ He insisted that the ceremonial law 
should be scrupulously obeyed.^ He even 
went so far as to say that not one jot or tittle 
of the law would remain unfulfilled while 
heaven and earth remained.^ Lest any one 
should think him a ruthless, reckless icono- 
clast, a negative revolutionist in religion, he 
said, "Think not that I am come to destroy the 
law or the prophets. I am come to carry 
them out." And he might have added, to 
develop, to expand them, to bring out their 
latent deeper meaning ; for this was precisely 
what he did. "Ye have heard that it hath 
been said by them of old," quoting from the 
twentieth chapter of Exodus, "thou shalt do 
no murder." "But I say unto you that who- 
soever is as much (as angry) with his brother 
shall be in danger of the judgment." It is 
not enough, he contends, to obey the sixth 
commandment, not enough to stop at the law 
of murder ; you must go down to the source of 

1 Mk. xiv. 12. » Mt. ndii. 2. 

» Mt. V. 18. 

217 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

murder in the passion of anger in the heart 
that it may be utterly consumed and thus no 
more provoke to murderous deeds. It is not 
enough to refrain from the adulterous act; 
you must go down to the source of it in the evil 
desire of the heart, — there lies the root of the 
sin, and duty calls for its extirpation. Purify 
the inner springs of conduct, be not content 
with avoidance of evil deeds, remember that 
not only the act itself constitutes the evil, 
but, still more, the prompting of the heart 
that leads to it. Go down below the killing 
to the wrath, below the adultery to the lust. 
Again, he bids his hearers love their enemies 
and contrasts his precept with the ancient 
saying thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate 
thine enemy. Here Jesus quotes no passage 
from the Old Testament but expresses the 
actual attitude and spirit of Hebrew ethics in 
Old Testament times. The highest ethical 
reach of the Old Testament is love of one's 
personal enemy. Nowhere in its pages is 
love of national enemies inculcated. On the 
contrary, we observe that the logic of wor- 

218 



JESUS 

shipping Yahweh as Israel's God and of re- 
garding Israel as His chosen people led directly 
to hatred of foreigners (enemies) as an inevi- 
table consequence of this unique privilege. 
Jeremiah, the Deuteronomist, and the author 
of the one hundred and thirty-ninth psalm 
(to cite typical instances), regarded hatred 
of foreigners as not only inevitable, but also 
praiseworthy. In unqualified opposition to 
this attitude Jesus pleads for a cosmopolitan 
love that shall extend beyond one's personal 
enemies to the hated Romans. Oppressors 
and persecutors though they be, yet out of 
very love for them, he says, pray for them. In 
bold and powerful contrast to the cry of the 
psalmist, "Do I not hate them that hate thee, 
O Lord,"^ there stands the exquisite simile of 
the sunshine and the rain which the Divine 
Goodness gives to the just and to the unjust 
alike, a simile which Jesus uses to exhort his 
hearers to be as impartial and as unrestrained 
and as unbounded in their love. The supreme 
commandment of Jesus was, "Be ye perfect, 

* Ps. cxxxix. 21 ; cf. Ps. cxxxvii. 8, 9. 
219 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

even as your Father in heaven is perfect." 
In that utterance Jesus gave infinite signifi- 
cance to every humblest human being, because 
it impHes that there are infinite possibihties 
in every child of God. 

The gospel of Christianity, therefore, as 
derived from Jesus, consists, not in obedience 
to an external standard, but in what may be 
called spiritual righteousness, or the morality 
of the spirit. Of that gospel there are hints 
in the Jewish literature of earlier times, but 
no one had succeeded in giving it special 
emphasis, no one had detached it from the 
legal system in which it was embedded and 
made of it a new moral issue. This is what 
Jesus did and it marks the distinctive char- 
acteristic of his message. According to this, 
each human being is a child of God, endowed 
with power to come into perfect harmony 
with Him, and the single-hearted desire for 
that harmony is the supreme motive for 
doing what is right. To become truly chil- 
dren of their heavenly Father, to become 
worthy of their divine kinship, this, he held, 

220 



JESUS 

is the highest reason why men and women 
should do what is right. Hence the ideal life, 
according to Jesus, is the life of the spirit, 
the life of union with the Eternal Life, the 
life of self -dedication to supreme holiness. 
Note that the concern of Jesus is exclusively 
with individual men and women and their 
reproduction of the divine love. The prob- 
lem of improving the political, social, indus- 
trial conditions of Palestine lay wholly out- 
side his sphere. He looked to a higher than 
human agency for the transformation of exist- 
ing conditions, confining his attention to the 
immediate need of each individual soul, viz. 
to become fitted for membership in the coming 
Kingdom of God on earth. Jesus, therefore, 
was not a socialist, as is sometimes claimed. 
He came, not to readjust external conditions, 
not to attempt any reorganization of society on 
altered economic and political principles, but 
only to refine men's hearts, to quicken in each 
human soul he addressed the sense of its divine 
origin, and its infinite possibilities and to show 
forth the real moral worth of human actions. 

221 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

Just as Buddhism became an organized 
religion only after the death of Gotama, so 
Christianity only after the death of Jesus. 
It is to the apostle Paul that we must turn 
as the founder of organized Christianity. It 
was he who cut loose from Judaism by the 
surrender of his allegiance to the Jewish law 
and ceremonial and the adoption of the 
crucified and risen Jesus as the new and only 
means of salvation. Paul took the ground 
that man is constitutionally incapable of ful- 
filling the law of righteousness. In the 
seventh chapter of his letter to the Romans 
he laid bare the innermost experience of his 
soul, his utter wretchedness because of the 
warfare between his carnal and his spiritual 
nature, the latter overpowered by the former 
in the struggle to fulfil the law of righteous- 
ness. Some other means of salvation must 
be found. Pondering the problem, there came 
to him the wonderful story of Jesus. Here, 
thought Paul, is One who did succeed in ful- 
filling the law of righteousness and whose 
crucifixion was the symbol of his compassion 

222 



JESUS 

for sin-stained man, taking it upon himself 
to serve as man's Redeemer. None of the 
gospels had as yet been written when Paul 
reached his solution of the problem. Believ- 
ing that Jesus differed from all other beings 
in kind as well as degree, Paul thought that 
if only the perfect righteousness of this ex- 
ceptional person could be borrowed, salvation 
would be secured. And he argued that it 
could be borrowed by the exercise of "faith," 
meaning thereby a mystical "putting on of 
the Lord Jesus Christ," being dominated in 
all one's thought, feeling and conduct by the 
spirit that was in him. Thus, whereas Jesus 
was buoyed up by the sense of the divine 
power with which man has been endowed, 
making him equal to the task of doing the 
Divine will, Paul was overcome by a sense 
of moral incapacity and turned to the virtue- 
power of the crucified and risen Christ, be- 
lieving that thereby alone could man come 
into at-one-ment with God. Upon this belief 
the new religion was founded, a Christian 
being differentiated from the representatives 

223 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

of every other religion by his belief in the 
exceptional character of Jesus, who alone of 
all men was able, through his perfection, to 
fulfil the law of righteousness and thereby 
became the fitting instrument to bring about 
the reconciliation of man to God. 



224 



VII 
MOHAMMED 



vn 

MOHAMMED 

^CHRONOLOGICALLY the latest of the 
^-^^ great moral leaders whose life and work 
we are studying is Mohammed. Like Moses, 
the Prophets, Jesus and Paul, Mohammed 
belonged to the Semitic branch of the hu- 
man family. He was the founder of the 
least appreciated and most misunderstood 
of the world's great religions. It originated 
thirteen centuries ago on the Arabian penin- 
sula, where the streams of commerce and 
culture met and mingled in the Middle Ages, 
where the markets of exchange were stationed 
or the treasures of India and the products of 
the Mediterranean coasts. There this re- 
Hgion was established in the unprecedented 
short period of twenty years and, unlike many 
another religion, without the aid of any royal 
patronage and support. Buddhism had its 

227 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

Asoka, Zoroastrianism its Vishtaspa, Judaism 
its Joshua, Christianity its Constantine, but 
Mohammedanism had no person of royal 
rank and power to assist in its estabHshment 
and spread. 

To-day this religion is acknowledged by 
nearly two hundred and fifty million souls 
and extends over an area equal to one-third 
of the globe. From Arabia it spread east- 
ward over Persia, Turkestan, Afghanistan; 
westward, across Syria, Asia Minor, Turkey; 
southward, to Africa, covering more than half 
of that continent. It found its way to India, 
and beyond, to the islands of Sumatra, Java 
and Borneo. 

Already within the first fifty years of its 
formation this religion extended from the 
Indus to the Tagus and from the Volga to 
the Arabian Sea. The Niger and the Nile, 
the Jordan and the Ganges, the Maritza and 
the Yang-tse-Kiang, all fertilize Mohammedan 
soil. Twice did this religion threaten to over- 
run Europe. Days there have been that were 
big with the fate of the world. On such a 

228 



MOHAMMED 

day Themistocles met Xerxes, ordaining that 
Europe should receive her civilization from 
Greece rather than from Persia. On such a 
day, in the year 732, Charles Martel met 
Abd-er-Rahman and forthwith the cross, not 
the crescent, became the emblem of European 
faith. So, again, in 1683, when John, King 
of Poland, at the head of twenty thousand 
soldiers defeated the Mohammedan army at 
Vienna, it was once more decreed that Mo- 
hammedanism should not be the religion of 
Europe. Yet it must be remembered that to 
the early representatives of this faith the 
world's debt is incalculably great. For it 
was they who transmitted the treasures of 
Greek literature from the Middle Ages to the 
Renaissance; they who originated the grace- 
ful art forms of which the Taj -Mahal and the 
Alhambra are the most famous examples. It 
was they who contributed to the sciences of 
algebra and chemistry, astronomy and medi- 
cine; they who dotted the Saracen empire 
with universities and who built at Bagdad 
and at Cairo the most renowned libraries in 

229 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

the world. During those centuries of ecclesi- 
astical despotism when the Christian Church 
suppressed all intellectual activities save those 
that were theological, causing the talent that 
reproduces to supplant the genius that creates, 
Mohammedans did all in their power to en- 
courage and stimulate research in every 
branch of human inquiry. No mediaeval 
pope or bishop ever sent thanks to a thinker 
for scientific discovery, but the sheik, XJl- 
Islam, sent congratulations and the benedic- 
tion of Allah to Al Hassan for his discovery^ 
of a fundamental law in optics. When Lon- 
don was a city of hovels and the stench in 
its streets such that no one could breathe its 
polluted air with impunity, Cordova was. 
noted for the cleanliness and beauty of her 
streets and squares. Arabic is the most 
widely-spoken language in the world and 
though Chinese characters are used by more 
people, knowledge of Arabic will carry one 
farther round the world. And with the 
Arabic vocabulary has gone the Mohammedan 
religion. To-day we decorate our walls and 

230 



MOHAMMED 

floors with fabrics that Mohammedans taught 
us to weave. We regale our senses with per- 
fumes they taught us to make, we teach our 
children the algebra and higher mathematics 
which they taught the fathers. 

It seemed to me essential to the formation 
of a just and adequate appreciation of Mo- 
hammed and his work that these preliminary 
statements should be made, all the more 
because of the still widespread impression 
that indebtedness is on the side of Moham- 
medans alone, that they owe to the civilizing 
agencies of Christianity their gradual emer- 
gence from semi-barbarism ! Can we afford 
to forget how different Christian civilization 
itself would have been but for the beneficent 
devotion of mediaeval Mohammedans to cul- 
ture ? And is it not true that many a civiliz- 
ing agency from which non-Christian peoples 
have profited cannot properly be ascribed to 
Christianity or to any religion whatsoever, 
but only to sources that are essentially secu- 
lar in their nature ? It is high time we exer- 
cised discrimination in our accounting for the 

231 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

civilization the world has reached. Great as 
the influence of Christianity unquestionably 
has been, it must be reckoned as only one of 
many factors that have contributed to the 
advancement of society. Moreover, it should 
be remembered that there are phases of non- 
Christian civilization notably, in China, as we 
have seen, equal, if not superior, to what we 
observe in the Christian civilization of Eu- 
rope and America. 

Mohammed has been called "the lying 
prophet." His name has been used as a 
synonym for Satan, and his followers have 
been described as "part of the infernal host." 
Dante described him as rent from the chin 
to where the body ends, wandering aimlessly 
about in the darkest region of hell among 
those who rent Christianity by controversy 
and schism. Luther, in one of his vehement 
expostulations upon people he despised, ex- 
claimed, "Oh fie, you horrid devil, you damned 
Mohammed." Melancthon declared that Mo- 
hammed was "inspired by Satan." For seven 
centuries after the prophet's death, not a 

232 



MOHAMMED 

public word in his defence or behalf was 
heard. The first just and kindly utterance 
came from the lips of Sir John Mandeville, 
an English traveller, and his tribute sounds 
like a bugle-note in the long, dark night of 
bigotry and hate. Four centuries later, Les- 
sing, in his "Nathan der Weise," paused to pay 
his respects to the essential worth of Moham- 
med's religion, and by his parable of the 
three rings, taught posterity a permanently 
helpful lesson in the ethics of criticism. And 
then came Carlyle, fairly stunning the British 
public by placing Mohammed among the 
heroes of history. Yet notwithstanding the 
enlightening utterances of these candid inves- 
tigators, prejudice, born of ignorance, persists 
in maintaining and circulating opinions about 
Mohammed that are without any valid basis 
whatsoever. Pulpit, platform and press must 
all plead guilty of unwarranted misrepresen- 
tation. I cite the preacher who described 
Mohammed as "a fanatic who used his religion 
as a cloak for immorality." I quote a lec- 
turer who said that "Mohammed's religion 

233 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

was synonymous with bravery, bigotry, 
knavery, sensuality and abysmal ignorance." 
I recall the definition of Mohammedanism in 
Webster's Dictionary — "a religion of im- 
posture." Even the best Christian biogra- 
phies are marred by the baneful eflFect of 
prejudice and by predilections so strong as to 
have led Renan to say that it is unreasonable 
to expect an orthodox Christian to do justice 
to the religion of Mohammed. No less dis- 
appointing are such Mohammedan biographies 
as that of Ameer Seyd Ali (for some years a 
judge on the British bench in Bengal), in 
which the best in Mohammedanism is con- 
trasted with the worst in Christianity. The 
truth is, an adequate, satisfying life of Mo- 
hammed has yet to be written, and I venture 
the statement that the forthcoming volume 
by Professor Goldziher, perhaps the foremost 
living authority on Islam, will prove to be 
the desired work. 

Mohammed was born in 571 at Mecca, 
one of the chief centres of Arabian commerce, 
and culture, visited annually by over two 

234 



MOHAMMED 

hundred thousand pilgrims, in accordance 
with the Moslem law requiring a pilgrimage 
thither at least once during the lifetime of 
every believer. The prophet's father died 
before the child was born and his mother, 
before he had reached his teens. How deeply 
he felt the deprivations of orphanage is 
attested by many a passage in the Qur'an, 
enjoining upon the faithful tender regard for 
the person of orphans and scrupulous care 
not to touch their property. Thus, in the 
fourth "Sura," we read: "Did not Allah 
find thee an orphan and hath he not taken 
care of thee ? And did he not find thee wan- 
dering in error, and hath he not guided thee 
into tr^ith ? And did he not find thee needy, 
and hath he not enriched thee ? Wherefore 
oppress not the orphan: neither repulse the 
beggar; but declare the goodness of thy 
Lord." Bereft of both father and mother the 
lad was adopted, first by his grandfather and 
later by his uncle, a rich, generous, magnani- 
mous man, who though disapproving of his 
nephew's radical tendencies in religion yet 

235 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

on grounds of kinship gave him freely of the 
abundance of his possessions. But one day 
financial reverses came to this noble guardian 
and the boy was obliged to earn his own 
living. For several years he tended sheep on 
the neighboring hills, till, at the age of twenty- 
four, he entered the service of a rich widow, 
Kadijah by name, acting as camel driver and 
conductor of caravans journeying between 
Jerusalem and Damascus. So infatuated was 
she with Mohammed that she married him, 
and though she was fifteen years his senior, 
their married life seems to have been both 
happy and mutually inspiring. When I think 
of Kadijah as Mohammed's wife, I recall, by 
contrast, Lucrezia del Fede, the wife of 
Andrea del Sarto, the so-called " faultless 
painter," one who was able to correct faults 
in the drawing of Raphael and Michael Angelo, 
but who lacked their spiritual genius. Yet 
Andrea felt he might have rivalled them both 
even here, if only Lucrezia had given him 
sympathy, understanding and inspiration. All 
three Kadijah gave Mohammed. She did for 

236 



MOHAMMED 

him just what it is in the power of woman to 
do for man, what ordinary women do in a 
commonplace way, what great women do in 
a divine way ; what Vittoria Colonna did for 
Michael Angelo, Frau von Stein for Goethe, 
Elizabeth Barrett for Robert Browning, Mar- 
garet Fuller for James Freeman Clarke. I 
mean that Kadi j ah kept Mohammed true to 
his highest aspirations, challenged him to the 
best of which he was capable, restored his 
courage and zeal when enthusiasm waned and 
inertia came on, nursed him in his days of 
illness, strengthened him in his hours of 
weakness, sustained and inspired him in his 
aim to be worthy the high calling whereunto 
he had been called. 

No authentic portrait of Mohammed has 
come down to us, chiefly because of that 
abhorrence of idolatry and image-worship 
which the prophet instilled into the hearts of 
his followers. All the portraits that have 
come down to us are outright fabrications, 
in the production of which imagination and 
prejudice have proven powerful creative 

237 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

agencies. Nevertheless, from various sources, 
especially the "Sunna" or tradition, we are 
enabled to form a mental picture of Mo- 
hammed's personal appearance. A man of 
medium height, he was, with a large, well- 
shaped head; his dark, curly hair streaming 
down upon his broad shoulders and his rest- 
less eye looking out beneath heav;^'^ eye- 
lashes and heavier eyebrows. His nose was 
slightly aquiline and his teeth were regular 
and white as hailstones. His was the simple 
life, lived at times to the point of severe 
austerity. For we read that he would some- 
times go for months without eating a single 
hearty meal, lighting his own fire, cooking 
his own food, mending his clothes and shoes 
in order that his slaves might enjoy a larger 
share of freedom. As indicative of a fine 
personal trait with which he is not generally 
credited, the following story serves a useful 
purpose. Sleeping one day beneath a palm- 
tree he was startled on awakening to find an 
old enemy, Duthur, standing over him with 
drawn sword. *'0 Mohammed," he cried, 

238 



MOHAMMED 

"who is there now to save thee ?" To which 
Mohammed promptly repHed, " God." Where- 
upon Duthur dropped thie sword. Moham- 
med seizing it, arose and said, "Who is there 
now to save thee, Duthur?" "No one," he 
answered. "Then learn from me to be merci- 
ful," said Mohammed and handed him back 
the sword. Not far from Mohammed's home, 
on a high bluflf overlooking the blazing sands 
of the desert, was a cave and thither he fre- 
quently retired to study, — not books, for he 
could not read, but Nature and the tablets 
of his own heart. Afflicted with a nervous 
disorder that sometimes caused loss of con- 
sciousness, it was in one of these attacks, 
while meditating in the cave, that he became 
apprised of his missiont^ Tradition tells us 
that he fell into convulsions, streams of per- 
spiration rolled down his cheeks, his eyes 
burned like glowing coals, and as he was 
about to end his misery by leaping over the 
bluff he heard the voice of the angel Gabriel 
saying, "Stop, thou art the prophet of the 
Lord." Running to Kadijah, he exclaimed, 

239 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

"Am I in truth a prophet, or am I mad?" 
To which Kadijah answered : " Thou hast 
spoken truly; no harmful thing has hap- 
pened thee; thou dost not return evil for 
evil; thou art kind to relatives and friends. 
Rejoice, thou wilt be the prophet of proph- 
ets." What a significant reply ! For as- 
suredly there can be no safer test of fitness 
for a prophetic career than the possession of 
precisely such moral traits. But Mohammed 
hesitated at first, just as Jesus and Gotama 
and Zoroaster hesitated before entering upon 
their prophetic calling. The temptation 
legends, related of these leaders, — what are 
they but the figurative expression of that 
moment of doubt as to the true path of duty 
which all four experienced prior to assump- 
tion of the prophetic ofBce.'^ And precisely 
as Jesus was obliged to go from Nazareth to 
Capernaum, in the hope that there he would 
receive a respectful hearing, so Gotama 
turned from Kapilavasta to Benares, Con- 
fucius from Lu to the northern provinces of 
China, and Mohammed from Mecca to 

240 



MOHAMMED 

Medina; proving once more the truth of the 
saying that **a prophet is not without honor 
save in his own country." Hearing that 
assassination was planned, Mohammed re- 
solved on flight, making his memorable escape 
in the dead of night, July 16, 622, to the 
city north of Mecca, now known as Medina. 
This year of the flight, or "Hejira," marks 
the beginning of the Mohammedan era. 

Throughout his ten years' ministry at 
Mecca, Mohammed had been simply a re- 
former of manners and morals, denouncing 
the vices of his countrymen, rebuking low 
standards of business dealing and decrying 
the crass idolatry into which his own native 
Arabian religion had degenerated. Hitherto 
he had been only a Jeremiah, preaching in 
the wilderness ; now, at Medina, he is a 
Hildebrand, ruling with an autocratic hand. 
He assumes the role of legislator, social and 
political organizer, conqueror. He drafts a 
new charter for the city, defines the duties of 
citizens, converts indiscriminate almsgiving 
into systematic taxation for the support of 

B 241 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACH'ERS' 

his theocracy, prohibits intersectarian warfare 
and compels the disputants to submit their 
differences to him for settlement. Finally, 
he leads an aggressive, conquering crusade, 
winning over all Arabia to his message and 
claims. For nearly ten years he conducted 
this singularly successful work, till, on the 
eighth of June, 632, he died, leaving to Abu- 
Bekr (his beloved disciple) and to succeeding 
califs, the task of missionary expansion which 
gradually resulted in establishing the founder's 
faith over an empire greater than that of 
Rome. 

To understand and appreciate just what 
it was that Mohammed accomplished, we 
must recall the conditions that obtained in 
mediaeval Arabia. 

For several centuries prior to the birth of 
Mohammed, communities of Jews and Chris- 
tians had been living there in close social and 
political relation with the natives. This con- 
tiguity and intercourse formed a favorable 
condition for the production of a type of 
religion broader and better than any one of 

242 



MOHAMMED 

the three as they then existed. Given such 
social and political interrelation among three 
distinct peoples, and there will occur a spon- 
taneous sifting of religious beliefs and rites. 
What remains will commend itself to the 
whole mixed community. We see this process 
illustrated in the formation of the pantheons 
of Egypt and Babylonia, shaped as they were 
in response to such social unification followed 
by a sifting of theological material. We see 
it again in the Hebrew polytheism of the 
twelfth century before our era, which resulted 
from political and social fusion with the 
native Canaanites, followed by a similar sift- 
ing of religious ideas. So also in Arabia in 
the seventh century of our era a correspond- 
ing syncretism produced a new type of re- 
ligion following the social assimilation of the 
three resident peoples. It began here, as 
elsewhere, in the sense of dissatisfaction with 
existing beliefs and practices, felt, at first, 
only by the thoughtful few. They saw what 
was needed and forthwith one of their num- 
ber placed himself at the head of a movement 

243 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

for positive reform. The Christianity of 
Arabia had shrunk into a shapeless mass of 
Hfeless dogmas, and belief in "the trinity" 
had degenerated into tritheism. Arabian 
Judaism had deteriorated to the level of an 
idolatry that made place for the worship of 
Ezra (the scribe and probable editor of the 
Pentateuch), so that Mohammed complained 
of the "Ezrolatry" of his time. The native 
Arabian religion had sunk into a diversified 
astrological fetichism, and many of the rites 
were barbaric and immoral. From these 
Mohammed recoiled, identifying himself with 
the "Hanifites," a sect opposed to the popular 
idolatries of the time. Seizing the psycho- 
logical moment for the surrender of all idola- 
try on the part of Jews, Christians and Arabs, 
he called for a return to what he believed was 
the original Semitic religion, the real fountain- 
source of Judaism, Christianity and Hanifism. 
First, to restore the ancestral faith of Abra- 
ham, who was neither Christian, nor Jew, 
nor Hanif , and who stood for monotheism and 
submission to the one only true God; then, 

244 



MOHAMMED 

to blend with this restored faith all that was 
vital and serviceable in each of the three 
local religions, — this was Mohammed's work. 
He believed himself to be a ** prophet of the 
Most High" to whom this syncretism had 
been revealed, yet he makes no claim to be 
in any way or degree supernatural. On the 
contrary, he emphatically aiSirms that he is 
only human, like the rest of his compatriots ; 
simply the medium through whom the Al- 
mighty One has made known His will ; merely 
the latest of the prophets, Adam, Noah, Abra- 
ham, Moses and Jesus having been the five 
preceding prophets. 

That Mohammed was an impostor it is 
difficult, if not impossible, to believe. Ortho- 
dox Christians and crude rationalists, it is 
true, have united in so regarding him, and 
Voltaire voiced their view in a verse as 
satirical as it is unjust. 

"Chaque peuple a son tour a brille sur la terre. 
Par les lois, par les arts et surtout par les guerres 
Le temps d'Arabie est enfin venu : 
II f aut un nouveau culte, il f aut de nouveaux fers, 
II faut un nouveau Dieu pour Taveugle univers." 

245 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

Voltaire's thought was that credulous hu- 
manity had been victimized by the crafty 
prophet of Arabia, who palmed off a new 
cult, new chains and a new God on an un- 
suspecting public ! "Amen," cried the crude 
rationalists, for to them all religion is decep- 
tion, an unscrupulous invention of politic 
priests and scheming prophets. But I hold 
that among the notions to be relegated to the 
realm of prejudice and superstition are these : 
religion is an invention, all prophets are im- 
postors, Mohammed perpetrated the most 
egregious fraud on record. What is religion ? 
It is man's expression through thought, feel- 
ing and conduct, of his relation to the uni- 
verse, or to the Power, or Powers, which he 
thinks of as governing it. And since man 
always has had and ever will have some such 
thought, it follows that religion is as spon- 
taneous as it is inevitable, and that it can 
never die while a thinking being remains on 
the planet. That Mohammed was not an 
impostor can be proved by reference to several 
significant incidents in his career. 

246 



MOHAMMED 

As a young man Mohammed had received 
a handsome salary for serving as custodian 
of the **Kaaba" that enshrined the sacred 
stone worshipped by resident believers and 
by visiting pilgrims. But in time there came 
to be associated with this object of veneration 
certain superstitious practices which Moham- 
med could not conscientiously indorse. To 
criticise them meant loss of his position and 
salary, yet he did not hesitate to denounce 
them and promptly sacrificed his profitable 
custodianship. Surely such conduct was not 
that of an impostor. Again, when implored 
by his wealthy uncle to desist from his preach- 
ing of "radical" views, Mohammed to name 
his own price for the silence his uncle de- 
sired, he repudiated the tempting offer, pre- 
ferring the luxury of free thought and free 
speech with poverty, if need be, to the luxury 
of ease and wealth with a tarnished soul. 
Read his own brave and uncompromising 
utterance: "Were I to be offered the sun in 
my right hand and the moon in my left hand 
to induce me to abandon my undertaking, 

247 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

the offer would be futile, for I will not rest 
until the Lord carry his cause to victory, or 
till I die for it." Could such be the part of 
an impostor? Once more, his only claim 
was that of being the instrument through 
which God had revealed the Qur'an. He 
made no claim to be infallible, or sinless, or 
supernatural. "Praise me not," he said, "as 
Jesus was praised. I am liable to err as 
other men, — I, too, need forgiveness for sin." 
Such, surely is not the language of an im- 
postor. Without pausing to adduce further 
evidence of Mohammed's sincerity and in- 
tegrity of purpose we may justly believe that 
nothing but the bigotry, malice and jealousy of 
enemies originated the charge of imposture. 
And nothing but blind prejudice and lazy in- 
difference to truth can account for the per- 
petuation of the charge. 

We come now to the book in which Moham- 
med's message has been recorded. 

The Qur'an is the most widely read of all 
the sacred scriptures of the world. It is more 
extensively and frequently read among Mos- 

248 



MOHAMMED 

lems than is the New Testament among Chris- 
tians. It is claimed for the Qur'an that if all 
extant copies were to be destroyed, no perma- 
nent loss would be involved because there is 
an eternal copy by the throne of Allah from 
which a fresh revelation could at any time be 
made. Moreover, the book is believed to 
have been revealed to Mohammed, piecemeal, 
by relays of angels, he dictating each "reve- 
lation" to his secretary, who at once committed 
it to writing on whatever material was avail- 
able at the moment. Finally the entire series 
of revelations was collected and edited by 
Abu-Bekr, in the year 634. Two features of 
the Qur'an differentiate it from all other 
Bibles ; its singleness of authorship and its 
singleness of text. The caliph Uthman, it was, 
who in 642 published a final recension of the 
book and ordered all earlier versions to be 
destroyed. Thus the Qur'an is the work of 
but one author and exists in only one text. Of 
all the Bibles of the great religions, the Qur'an 
is the least attractive to the general reader. 
Curiosity draws him to its pages, but he is soon 

249 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

repelled because the book has no continuity 
of thought, no charm of style, the thought and 
the style suggesting the camel of the desert — 
free to browse wherever stubble is to be found. 
The one hundred and fourteen chapters of the 
book are provided with superscriptions, indeed, 
but these, for the most part, bear no relation 
to the contents. The events narrated follow 
no chronological order, and only the patient 
scholarship of specialists has enabled us to 
shape from this literary waste the prophet's 
thought. Mohammed was neither a theo- 
logian nor a philosopher, but a religious ' en- 
thusiast with a genius for adoption and adap- 
tation of Jewish and Christian lore. He spoke 
his "revelations" as they came, regardless of 
their agreement with or contradiction of each 
other. When modern Muslims find two con- 
tradictory injunctions on one and the same 
subject, they take the one best suited to 
modern ideas. For this they find warrant in 
the second Sura: "What verses we cancel or 
cause thee to forget, we give a better, or its 
like." Already there are two hundred and 

250 



MOHAMMED 

twenty-five such cancelled verses on which 
Muslims are agreed. The ultimate criterion 
on which the abrogation of passages in the 
Qur'an depends is the agreement of Muslims 
themselves. "My people," said Mohammed, 
"will never agree on an error," and in such 
agreement is the hope of Islam. From the 
surcharged brain of Mohammed his thought 
pushed on undiked, unchannelled, too swift to 
allow of skilful or consistent expression. Car- 
lyle complained that the Qur'an was the most 
toilsome reading he ever undertook. He de- 
scribed it as "a wearisome, confused jumble; 
endless iterations, long-windedness, entangle- 
ment; most crude, incondite, insupportable 
stupidity in short." But, thanks to the la- 
bors of Arabic scholars who have applied the 
principles of "the higher criticism" to the 
Qur'an, we can now arrange its chapters in 
chronological order, dividing the book into 
three sections, corresponding to the three 
periods in the prophet's career. The first of 
these, marked by doubt, misgiving, misap- 
preciation and opposition is readily discerned 

251 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

in a series of chapters aglow with enthusiasm 
bordering on frenzy, recording his visions with 
a fervor that persuades us of his sincerity. 
The second period was that of growing ap- 
preciation and success, and is reflected in 
chapters that are marked by calm, dispas- 
sionate argument addressed to converts who 
recognize his authority. The third period 
finds the prophet making concessions and com- 
promises for the sake of further success. He 
has grown shrewd, calculating, politic in his 
aggressive crusade, and these qualities come 
to light in a group of chapters whose weak, 
willowy utterances betray a decided decline 
from the high plane where sincere consecra- 
tion and perfervid enthusiasm had transfigured 
the man. 

Described in a single word the Qur'an is a 
potpourri of myths, legends, narratives, legal 
statutes, ethical precepts and ceremonial in- 
junctions. It is a reservoir into which, through 
Mohammed's mind, many different streams 
of Jewish, Christian and Arabian thought have 
been emptied. As conductor of caravans 

252 



MOHAMMED 

Mohammed must have acquired considerable 
information on BibHcal subjects. Tales of 
Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, Jesus, related 
by not very competent reporters, entered 
Mohammed's head and fermented there. What 
he knew of Old and New Testament characters 
he never derived from direct contact with 
these books. Probably he never saw a Hebrew 
Old Testament or a Greek New Testament. 
But many a Hebrew and Christian story, as 
recorded in rabbinical books, he doubtless 
heard, while such apocalyptic books as Joel, 
Daniel, Ezekiel, Enoch, Revelation, exerted 
their influence, as the Qur'an amply testi- 
fies. 

The reading of a few selected passages may 
well begin with the prayer more frequently 
recited by believers than any other. It has 
been called the "Lord's Prayer" of Moham- 
medanism because of its frequent repetition by 
the faithful, and because, like the Lord's 
Prayer in the gospel of Matthew, it consists of 
seven verses and is regarded as a "summary 
of the faith." 

253 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

"Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds ! 
The compassionate, the merciful ! 
King on the day of reckoning ! 
Thee only do we worship, and to Thee do we cry for 

help. 
Guide Thou us on the straight path, 
The path of those to whom Thou hast been gracious ; 
With whom thou art not angry, and who go not 
astray." ^ 
Woe to those who stint the measure : 
Who when they take by measure from others, exact 

the full; 
But when they mete to them or weigh to them, 

minish, — 
What ! have they no thought that they shall be raised 

again for the great day ? 
The day when mankind shall stand before the Lord of 

the worlds. 
Yes ! the register of the wicked is in Sidjin, a book dis- 
tinctly written. Woe, on that day to those who 
treated the day of judgment as a lie ! 
Yes; they shall be shut out as by a veil from their 

Lord on that day ; 
Then shall they be burned in Hell-fire : 
Then shall it be said to them, "This is what ye deemed 

a lie." 
Even so. But the register of the righteous is in lUi- 
youn; a book distinctly written; the angels who 
draw nigh unto God attest it. 
Surely, among delights shall the righteous dwell ! 

* Sura i. 

■4 

254 



MOHAMMED 

Seated on bridal couches they will gaze around ; 

Thou shalt mark in their faces the brightness of delight.^ 

This day have I perfected your religion for you and 
have fulfilled up the measure of my favors upon you : 
and it is my pleasure that Islam be your religion. 

O believers ! when ye address yourselves to prayer, 
wash your faces, and your hands up to the elbow, and 
wipe your heads, and your feet to the ankles. 

And if ye have become unclean, then purify your- 
selves. But if ye are sick, or on a journey, and ye 
find no water, then take clean sand and rub your 
faces and your hands with it. 

God hath promised to those who believe, and do 
the things that are right, that for them is pardon and 
a great reward. 

But they who are infidels and treat our signs as lies 
— these shall be meted with Hell-fire. 

O people of the Scriptures ! now is our Apostle 
come to you to clear up to you much that ye have 
concealed of those Scriptures, and to pass over many 
things. Now hath a light and a clear Book come to 
you from God, by which God will guide him who shall 
follow after his good pleasure, to paths of peace, and 
will bring them out of the darkness to the light, by his 
will : and to the straight path will he guide them.^ 

Considering the heterogeneous content of the 
Qur'an, it may be fairly questioned whether 
one is justified in speaking of the ethics of the 

* Sura Ixzxviii. * Sxira v. 

255 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

Qur'an. Yet despite its heterogeneity there 
is one integrating ethical idea that pervades 
the book, namely submission. And "sub- 
mission" (Islam) expresses in a single word 
the core of Mohammed's message as a moral 
leader. The supreme duty of Mohammedans 
is to submit to the will of "the omnipotent, 
resistless One," the One to whom everything 
is subject, "the Lord of the East and of the 
West," the all-governing, all-compelling One; 
"the mighty and merciful One," whose mercy 
is due to his very omnipotence. He is likened 
to the wind and all mankind to a field of gf ain 
that sways with the blowing of the wind. He 
is a heavenly Sultan and Muslims are they who 
submit to his decrees, they who, like the wil- 
lows bend before the blast, while infidels are 
they who, like the oak, resist it. 

But it would be a serious mistake to sup- 
pose that submission as inculcated by Mo- 
hammed implied merely a spiritual attitude 
on the part of believers toward Allah. Four 
distinct duties are involved in the doctrine of 
submission. 

256 



MOHAMMED 

First : To abjure idolatry, which is the be- 
stowal upon false gods of the homage due to 
Allah alone. Just as the subjects of an earthly 
Sultan are instantly punished to the full extent 
of the civil law when they dare to enthrone a 
usurper and do him homage, so idolaters who 
dare to acknowledge any other God than this 
heavenly Sultan will be punished hereafter, 
on the Judgment Day, to the full extent of the 
religious law. Every mosque, every palace 
bears witness to Mohammed's abhorrence of 
idolatry. Nowhere are statues, or images, 
or any sort of reproductions of the human form 
to be seen, but everywhere arabesque decora- 
tions, — those geometric traceries that repro- 
duce only objects from the inanimate world. 

Second : To extend the heavenly Sultan's 
dominion on earth, to make converts, by force 
if need be, because refusal to acknowledge and 
obey Allah is rebellion, and rebellion must be 
suppressed, by persuasion if possible and if 
not, then by force. Like Robespierre, Mo- 
hammed believed in the efficacy of fear, hold- 
ing that the preservation of a creed and of good 

s 257 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

character is insured only by the discipline of 
terror. 

But here we must distinguish between the 
prophet's earlier and later injunctions. In 
the earlier chapters of the Qur'an he constantly 
exhorts his Meccan followers to bear patiently 
the wrongs inflicted on them because of their 
religion. His earliest permission to fight is 
given to those "who have been driven forth 
from their homes undeservedly" merely for 
saying "Our Lord is God." ^ A more general 
warrant for making war on the Meccans is 
given in the second Sura (186-190): "Fight in 
God's way with those who fight with you, but 
do not take the aggressive; verily God loves 
not the aggressor." Later, Mohammed used 
force without hesitation, not only against the 
Meccans, but to subdue other cities, like Ta'if, 
and to bring the Bedouin tribes into submis- 
sion.^ But it is clear that the motive of these 
wars, as of those against the Jews in Medina 
and its vicinity, was political rather than re- 

1 Sura xxii. 40, 42. 

* Sura xvi. 37, 84 ; xxix. 45 ; xUi. 47, 257. 64. 12. 

258 



MOHAMMED 

ligious, though Mohammed, as the head of a 
church-state, doubtless regarded the two as 
identical. At the moment of his death he had 
an army marshalled for an expedition into 
Syria. In one of the apparently authentic 
traditions he urges his followers to make war 
upon unbelievers until they confess the unity 
of God and then grant them security. In his 
aggressive policy he distinguished heathen 
polytheists and idolaters from the adherents 
of the "revealed religions, Judaism and Chris- 
tianity," tolerating the latter and exacting a 
tax from them for protection received, while 
the former he constrained to abandon their 
errors and submit to Allah. ^ 

Never has it been either the principle or 
the practice of Islam to convert people gener- 
ally, by forcible means. Many of the early 
caliphs, for economic reasons, disapproved of 
voluntary conversion of their Jewish and Chris- 
tian subjects. More fanatical rulers laid the 
adherents of other religions under so many dis- 
advantages that members of them became 

iSura xvi. 126; xlii. 13, 14; iii. 19, 99, 100; xxii. 66; ix. 6, 11. 
259 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

Moslems for relief. In the first appendix to 
T. W. Arnold's "The Preaching of Islam" there 
is an exhaustive array of quotations from the 
Qur'an, regarding Mohammed's attitude to 
missionary work, which the doctrine of sub- 
mission requires. Here, in chronological order 
the texts are marshalled, including those abro- 
gated by the agreements of the Moslems. 

The third obligation which submission in- 
volves is obedience to the precepts of Allah, the 
making of one's moral account "square" be- 
fore the Judgment Day dawns. For on that 
Day the heavenly Sultan determines the fate 
of each human soul. Then will a man walking 
to the Judgment-seat be met by a loathsome- 
looking object to which he will say, "Be gone; " 
but it will reply, "I cannot, I am thy con- 
science." Then will the fraudulent buyer and 
the fraudulent seller walk to the Judgment-seat 
with the goods they dishonestly bought or sold 
tied to their necks and dragging behind them ! 
No religion has made so much of the utilitarian 
motive of reward and punishment as has Mo- 
hammedanism, nor is it anywhere presented in 

260 



MOHAMMED 

such frankly materialistic terms as in the 
Qur'an. 

The fourth factor in the ethics of submis- 
sion is loyal devotion to the "five pillars of 
fidelity," as they are called, the simple re- 
ligious forms, binding upon all believers : — 

1. Repetition of the creed, "There is no God but 
Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet." 

2. Prayer and ablutions five times daily in response 
to the Muezzin when he ascends his minaret to summon 
the faithful to prayer. 

3. Almsgiving, two and a half per cent of one's pos- 
sessions to be devoted to philanthropy. 

4. Fasting from sunrise to sunset of the month of 
"Ramadan," in which the prophet fled from Mecca to 
Medina. 

5. A pilgrimage, at least once in one's lifetime, to 
Mecca. 

In the simplicity of these requirements 
Mohammed showed his practical wisdom. 
Only the fifth was for many a hardship, and 
eventually it was modified to meet conditions 
where fulfilment was most difficult or impos- 
sible. So the Roman Catholic Church pro- 
tects its members against ceremonial oppres- 
sion by corresponding concessions; so the 

261 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

apostle Paul abolished the rite of circumcision, 
though deemed by his fellow-Jews to be the 
badge of noblest citizenship. 

In the ethical legislation that Mohammed 
provided for his theocracy, prominence was 
given to total abstinence from intoxicating 
liquor and to humaneness. Drunkenness is 
the vice most to be feared in tropical countries 
and was generally condemned as a violation 
of Divine Law. Mohammed's opposition to 
Christianity was based, in part, upon its fail- 
ure to put an absolute veto on the use of in- 
toxicants. General Lew Wallace, after twenty 
years' residence in Constantinople, declared 
that while Christian drunkards were to be seen 
daily in the city streets, he never once saw a 
drunken Mohammedan. In the estimation of 
President Eliot of Harvard University Mo- 
hammedanism has been a vastly better thing 
for many of the tribes of Africa, habitually 
drunk, than Christianity could have been. A 
"Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Animals" is unknown in Mohammedan coun- 
tries except in cities overrun with Christians, 

262 



MOHAMMED 

and in Turkish cemeteries, it is said, the four 
corners of slabs that cover graves are grooved 
to catch the rainfall so that the birds may drink 
and sing over the places where their human 
brethren sleep. 

The charge of advocating polygamy and 
slavery has been made against Mohammed 
many times. But it were well if his critics 
paused to remember that these evils existed 
for centuries before his time and that the most 
he could do was to improve the condition of 
slaves and the position of women. From sev- 
eral Suras we learn that he inculcated kindly 
treatment of slaves and ranked their eman- 
cipation as a virtue for which the slave- 
holder would be abundantly rewarded in 
paradise. Certainly we to-day are too near 
the "emancipation proclamation" to dare 
to reproach Mohammed for not having abol- 
ished slavery. 

In dealing with the problem of marriage and 
divorce Mohammed limited the number of 
wives a man could have to four, at the same 
time prescribing monogamy for all who could 

263 



GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS 

not make proper provision for more than one 
wife. He conditioned divorce upon four 
months' support of the wife after separation 
had taken place and he required four witnesses 
to vindicate a charge of adultery, punishing 
with a hundred stripes and imprisonment any 
one who failed to prove the charge/ 

When we remember the utterly uncivilized 
character of the tribes that inhabited Africa 
and parts of Asia at the time of Mohammed's 
appearance, we may well believe that his gospel 
of submission was exactly suited to the needs 
of those peoples, for they were still in the child- 
hood stage of development, in which obedi- 
ence to rulers and rules is the highest virtue. 
Nor is anything in religious history more re- 
markable than the way in which Mohammed 
fitted his transfiguring ideas into the existing 
social system of Arabia. To his everlasting 
credit it must be said that in lifting to a higher 
plane of life the communities of his day and 
place, he achieved that which neither the 
Judaism nor the Christianity of mediaeval 

1 See Suras 2, 4, 24, 65. 
264 



MOHAMMED 

Arabia could accomplish. Nay more, in the 
fulfilment of that civilizing work Mohammed 
rendered invaluable service, not only to Arabia, 
but also to the entire world. 



265 



BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Arnold, T. W. The Preaching of Islam. 

Bloomfield, M. The Religion of the Veda. 

Carlyle, T. Heroes and Hero Worship. (Moham- 
med.) 

Carus, Paul. The Gospel of the Buddha. 

Clodd, Edward. The Birth and Growth of Myth. 

The Childhood of Religions. 

GoLDZiHER, I. The Religion of Islam. 

Harnack, a. The Expansion of Christianity. 

Haug, M. Essays. 

HiRTH, F. China. 

Jackson, A. V. W. Zoroaster, the Prophet of Iran. 

Janes, L. G. A Study of Primitive Christianity. 

Johnson, S. China. (Oriental Religions.) 

Persia. (Oriental Religions.) 

The Religions of India. 

Legge, J. Chinese Classics. 

LoisY, A. The Religion of Israel. 

Mueller, Max. Auld Lang Syne, 2 vols. 

Collected Essays, 2 vols. 

What Can India Teach Us ? 

Oldenberg, H. Buddha. 

Pfleiderer, Otto. Religion and Historic Faiths. 

The Apostle Paul. 

The Philosophy and Development of Religion. 

Rhys-Davids, T. W. Buddhism. 

Sacred Books of the East, ed. M. Mueller. Oxford 
edition. 

Schmidt, N. The Prophet of Nazareth. 

267 



BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Smith, W. R. The Old Testament in the Jewish 

Church. 

The Prophets of Israel. 

TiELE, C. P. Outlines of History of Religions, last 

edition. 
Toy, C. H. Judaism and Christianity. 



268 



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